


Lamb Among Wolves (NSFW)

by eratothemuse



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Choking, F/M, Mafia AU, Mob AU, NSFW, Smut, Unprotected Sex, dark themes, dubcon themes, mentions of guns/violence/etc. (its a mob au people), not safe for work, virgin!reader
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-21
Updated: 2020-10-02
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:02:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 39,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22834477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eratothemuse/pseuds/eratothemuse
Summary: You thought you were free, but circumstances beyond your control drag you back into the world you’ve tried so hard to escape. This time, there might not be any getting out.Imagine owing mobster!Bucky a lot of money after your deadbeat brother bails with it, leaving you with his debt, and you offer yourself as payment that he is more than happy to collect himself.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes & Reader, James "Bucky" Barnes/Original Female Character(s), James "Bucky" Barnes/Reader
Comments: 112
Kudos: 532
Collections: Explicit Stories





	1. Deal Me In

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Y’all asked, and here it is!! I hope this is all y’all are wishing for, darlings! I took what I wrote for the imagine and kind of twisted stuff and elaborated, so it may look a bit similar in parts. I just really liked the part I wrote for the imagine and wanted to use that still, with more of a story to it. I may write more of this… I’m kinda into this oops!

##  **_Lamb Among Wolves_ ♠️ _Part I ; Deal Me In_**

Photo sources: [1](https://megmeg-chan.tumblr.com/post/190927931567/unearthlydust-endings-beginnings) | [2](https://megmeg-chan.tumblr.com/post/190922779367/bluesteelstan-sebastian-stan-in-endings) | [3](https://yourjamesbuckybarnes.tumblr.com/post/190928276636/biaesthetc-just-your-average-angsty-bi) | [4](https://yourjamesbuckybarnes.tumblr.com/post/190928222116) | [5](https://yourjamesbuckybarnes.tumblr.com/post/190928180516/the-silver-09-%E1%B4%8D%E1%B4%8F%C9%B4%E1%B4%87%CA%8F-%E1%B4%8D%E1%B4%8F%C9%B4%E1%B4%87%CA%8F-%E1%B4%8D%E1%B4%8F%C9%B4%E1%B4%87%CA%8F-%E1%B4%80%C9%B4%E1%B4%85-%E1%B4%8D%E1%B4%8F%CA%80%E1%B4%87) | [6](https://yourjamesbuckybarnes.tumblr.com/post/190928145041/aestheticlockscreen-pyscho-aesthetics-666) | [7](https://megmeg-chan.tumblr.com/post/190928367682/forever-is-not-for-everyone) | [8](https://megmeg-chan.tumblr.com/post/190929159037/bypluviophile-sebastian-stan-side)

* * *

Gritting your teeth, your nails dig into the palm of your hand, cutting and tense until you relax your fists only to repeat the motion, the nervous energy pushing you onward, further towards your fate. The boy, Peter, was a young thing, with a face too soft for this life he’s found himself wrapped up in, but the distinctive outline of a pistol tucked into the back of his pants is hard enough to make up for it. You wondered, as you followed him deeper into the crevices of the club, past the dancers onstage and the velvet ropes that barricaded the VIP section further within, if he was even old enough to be in a place like this.

Apparently, he was old enough to use a gun, and you guessed that’s all that mattered to men like these.

He stops abruptly, holding up a hand with his lips in a hesitant frown, “Wait here.”

A nod is all you can manage, too worried that, should you shed a single word, you would lose your nerve right here and now. Between the anger and the fear, is the small calm composure you were desperately clinging onto for dear life. Were you crazy, for this? Quite possibly.

Anyone else would have ran as soon as Misty showed up at your door, been fixed with the worry swirling in her dark eyes as she asked, _“When was the last time you heard from your brother?”_ Any sane person would have been worried about putting as much distance between themselves and New York as possible, as soon as she said, _“Word’s out, he’s ripped a lot of money from those boys out in Brooklyn, and they’re looking for him. They’re gonna’ be looking for you, too, soon enough. You have somewhere you can go? Somewhere they won’t look?”_

But you? You were so damn mad, maybe all sanity went out the window, as soon as you learned about the trouble your brother had gotten you into. He hadn’t even bothered to call, to warn you that he was about to bring your whole world crashing down around you; so much for the stereotypical big brother protecting you, right?

Your family had a long history of straying from the straight and narrow. They were criminals, plain and simple, and you had done your hardest to keep yourself from becoming a product of your raising. You went to school, kept your head down, and worked multiple jobs just to get yourself out of the gutter from which you’d come from. You were the only one of them that could boast a clean record, and in one fell swoop, your brother had managed to ruin the legitimate, simple life you had carved for yourself on the backside of Hell’s Kitchen.

You didn’t know all of what he did, of course, but you knew who he ran with. If they were just some two-bit gangsters, you wouldn’t have been so worried, but these guys? They were the Brooklyn mob, and Donnie, well, he had been one of their favorite boys.

Until now, if you had to guess.

And, God forgive you, you were so mad that if you even did know where the deadbeat was, you would have handed him over to them on a silver platter for the trouble he’s caused you. You stopped being your brother’s keeper a long time ago, but with the men he ran with now, that hardly mattered. You were family, and to them, that meant his sins were yours to bear.

You had heard the stories of how they operated. You grew up on them. Someone stole from them, humiliated them? They killed them, their family, maybe even their postman for good measure.

Well, you had never been ready to die for him, least of all now.

Walking through their front door, most would call stupid. You called it a Hail Mary.

Shifting from foot to foot outside the cracked door, music pumping in your ears and scrambling your thoughts, you were starting to think that maybe it was just plain stupid. Your eyes catch the red neon at the end of the hall, announcing the exit around the corner _. Maybe, you could make a run for it—_

Before you can entertain the thought, the door swings back open, and you’re met with the dark eyes of the boy again. He juts his chin upwards, and you catch sight of a dark tattoo peeking from the collar of his shirt, spider-legs painted along his collarbone in reds and blues.

“You’re lucky, ma’am,” he begins, voice softer than it should probably be, and you wonder if the pleasantry is a product of his raising or a habit, as he looks you over with pity, “Boss is in a good mood. He’ll see you.”

Even before he slips from your pathway, you catch sight of the tall man leaning on the other side of the room. Blonde hair combed perfectly, immaculate beard trimmed short along a sharp jaw— he’s almost too pretty to make you think he’s a mobster, but the way he’s leering over the head of the boy tells you different. Reminds you that you would be a fool to think Steve Rogers is anything other than dangerous.

“Thank you, Peter,” your own rigid politeness is out of nervous habit, and Peter pulls the door closed behind you as soon as you step foot into the darker room, cutting off the music to a low throb, your lifeline to the world beyond these walls along with it.

You’re left shifting there, eyes darting around the room like a prisoner looking for an out, but you know your only escape resides solely in the door behind you, and you doubt you could even reach for it before they caught you. In your hasty scrutiny of the room, you catch sight of another man to your immediate left, and you have to force down the urge to startle from his silent observation.

Dark-skinned, with a more angular and controlled beard shadowing his jaw, but Sam Wilson is just as dangerous looking as his blonde counterpart on the opposite end of the room. Leather frames his shoulders, jacket loose and contrasting to the soft cotton of the blonde’s tighter sweater, but his arms are crossed just the same. It’s then that you realize they’ve cornered you.

You feel so stupid, but your voice shakes as it spews your reflexive words, “U-Uh, hi—”

“He’s a good kid,” breaks you from intense brown eyes, drawing them towards the third man in the room, sitting on a lounge, looking far too relaxed for the tension in the air. He’s brunette, and for an instant, your breath catches with the sight of him. He’s younger than you expected, but you count your blessings that James Barnes is attractive. That made this, if only a little, easier. Stubble frames his casual smile, arm thrown along the back of the seat, and legs spread obnoxiously wide, knees nearly brushing the table in front of him as he swirls a drink with the hand he rests along his lap. It’s only then that you realize the fingers around the glass are made of metal. At your silence, he elaborates, tearing your eyes from the glint of his fingertips and back to his eyes, “Peter, that is. Smart.”

A slow nod comes from you as he leans forward, sipping the dark alcohol, blue eyes watching you from where he sits, but he hardly seems through talking. You could let him talk. You were good at listening.

“Knows when to keep his mouth shut,” he comments, as casually as if saying the sky was blue, but the way his glass punctuates his words as it comes into contact with the table shows he’s anything but calm, “and I don’t have to worry about him sticking his fingers where they don’t belong.”

You swallow thick, before breathing, “I heard you were looking for my brother.”

“And where’d you hear something like that?” Sam questions, tilt to his head in interest as his eyes squint at you, sizing you up for hint of a lie.

“You’ve got word out all over the streets,” you huff, unable to keep the defensive tone from breaking through, “did you really think I wouldn’t catch wind of it eventually?” Your eyes slip back to ice blue, knowing he’s the only one in this room whose opinion of you really mattered in this moment, “And you know the stock I come from. It was only a matter of time before someone warned me.” You hope your bluff isn’t so readable on your face, and that Donnie hasn’t run his fat mouth to everyone and their mother about how sorry a sister you were, for not visiting in the last five years.

You couldn’t tell them you got your information from a cop, because who knows what kind of case she was compromising to even warn you in the first place.

Barnes takes his time staring at you, before leaning back in his seat, apparently accepting your explanation, “Do you know just how much trouble your brother’s gotten you into, doll?” The endearment tacked onto the end of the sentence flows softly, like he didn’t think a second thought of it, but there’s no affection behind it. His voice was cold, just like his eyes, but everything else about him screamed _fire_. Warned of death and destruction, telling you to run, and never look back.

You didn’t have to look long for a reason why they once called him the Winter Soldier.

Another nod is all he gets from you, but he waits, until the silence is too much for you to bear and you stammer, “I have… some idea of it.” He uses silence to his advantage, until you’re squirming, wringing your hands at your side as you start, “You have to know— I don’t have anything to do with what Donnie did. If I even knew where the deadbeat was, I’d tell you.”

His smile quirks upwards along the corner of it, pitying, but not kind, as a brow raises, expectation on his tongue, “No loyalty for your own flesh and blood? That’s cold.”

“People only get my loyalty if they’ve earned it,” your chin raises slightly, unable to hold your contempt at bay when you scoff, “and I learned as a girl that Donnie and loyalty were two things that don’t go well together.” It’s too brazen, and you regret as soon as you say it, “Looks like you’ve figured the same.”

But the chuckle that comes from him is unexpected, and his shrug relaxes you, if only a little, “You’re not wrong.” Just as quickly as the amusement flits along his face, it’s gone, replaced by a stern look as the smile slips from his face and he leans forward again, “Your family stole from mine, and regardless of your loyalties to family, that makes this your problem, as much as mine. Do you know what happens to people who steal from me? I’m assuming you don’t, or you wouldn’t be here right now—”

You interrupt him, thinking little of the consequences for the impoliteness, but maybe the desperation in your voice will grant you some forgiveness, “That’s _why_ I’m here. I-I know how this works.”

You think the slight shock in his eyes is genuine, as he studies you like he couldn’t quite figure you out in the beat of a second before he speaks again, “Is that right? Well, if that is true, I’m surprised at you.” Barnes gestures to you offhandedly, and you can’t tell if he’s impressed or thinks you're as much an idiot as you feel right now for it, “Takes guts to show your face, with the heat you’ve got on your tail. Like walking right into hell with a target on your back.”

“Guts, or stupidity,” is the first that you hear from the tall blonde brooding in the corner, a scoff at his tongue as his glare burns into you. “ _Buck_ , I don’t know why we’re even wasting our time with her. She’s probably just tryin’ to give Donnie a chance to make it to the border.”

“That asswipe would be over it already if he had a single brain cell left in his head,” Barnes bites back, and the speed at which Rogers backs down is astounding, “but he probably doesn’t, considering stealing from me in the first place wasn’t a real smart move.”

“He never really was a straight-A student,” you can’t help but murmur under your breath, and Sam chuckles a bit at your side.

“I don’t know, Steve, I kinda’ like her. Would be a pity to not at least hear her out,” Wilson’s eyes burn into your own, smile cutting along pearly white teeth, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. It’s as much of a taunt as it is a question when he asks, “And she wouldn’t think of wasting our time, would you, sweetheart?”

“You did send the kid in here, sayin’ you had something worth my time,” Barnes prompts, and you know he’s getting impatient with the smalltalk, urging you on with, “so far, I haven’t heard it.”

Slipping your hands down the sides of your thighs, you wipe the sweat from them, heart hammering in your ears. You wish you’d taken a tylenol, because you can feel the headache coming on from all the stress. Licking your lips, you try your best to treat your dry mouth as you articulate a reply, praying to anyone who was listening that maybe, just once, they’d have mercy on you as you look into the eyes of what may have been the devil himself.

What you were selling, may as well have been your soul.

“You’re a businessman, Mister Barnes,” you start, a careful slowness to your words, clinging tight to the shred of composure you’re pleading your case on, “so, let’s make a deal.”

He looks entirely amused, reaching to take a sip of his drink before repeating, “A deal.”

You nod, feeling the flush creeping through your veins, and suddenly you wish you had your own drink to quell your nerves, “I’m worth more alive than dead. There must be something— some way I can pay off whatever part of my brother’s… _debt_ , is over my head.”

“You’re gonna’ pay off two million dollars?” Sam barks out a laugh, unable to hold it back as his shoulders shake with the force of it, dying to chuckles in the back of his throat when Steve’s stare fixes him with a warning.

“I admit, you’ve got me curious on how you plan to do that, doll,” Barnes bites his smile, taking his bottom lip between teeth that may as well have been fangs, amusement just as dark as his men’s. You can tell, they don’t believe you in the slightest.

You don’t dare show them the embarrassment and humiliation lacing your veins. At least, not anymore of it than was evidenced on your cheeks. Head held high, you announce to the room your offer, the only thing you have of any value to pay him with, yourself.

“ _I’m a virgin_ ,” it shakes on your tongue, and you curse yourself and the man in front of you for it, holding his gaze steady as it widens a fraction with surprise at your proposition, “It’s never been worth anything to me before, but the real question is, is it worth something to you?” Not daring to spare a glance at the men flanking you, you force yourself to remain captured in the slight shock of the only man who mattered in this room, right now, and hope he can’t see the uncertainty in your own as you breathe, “Men pay a lot for that sort of thing, don’t they?”

You half expect him to laugh in your face, but it never comes, even long after he recovers from whatever stunned state you’d managed to put this _big, bad don_ into in the first place. Instead, he scrutinizes you, lounging against the seat as he turns his glass in his fingers, _thinking_.

“Buck—” his jaw clenches at that, only slightly, as he interrupts Steve’s low prompting with the raise of his hand.

He looks down at his glass, hand lowering to relax on the back of the lounge, voice low as he murmurs, like it’s a suggestion, “I think this is something better discussed in private.”

Even you can tell it’s no suggestion.

His men share a look, before Sam shrugs and moves towards the door, “Alright, man.”

Steve pushes from the wall, not quite glaring at you anymore, but fixing you with a stern look that’s all authority and intent to back up the smooth threat on his tongue as he moves past you, “I don’t think I have to tell you that if you try _anything_ —”

“Steve,” Barnes repeats, a hint of a chuckle in his tone, meeting the warning in a strange, lighthearted twist that feels so wrong with the tension straining your shoulders and the clench to Steve’s jaw. Still, the taller man backs down, once again, at the call of his name, “She knows better than that, don’t you, doll?”

“Unlike my brother, I’m not an idiot, thanks.”

_Debatable_ , an annoying part of you quips from the crevices of your mind, _considering where you’re standing._

But your sarcasm earns a smirk from the brunette, who crooks his fingers towards you and urges you closer, “Come on, doll, take a seat.”

You’re so startled by it, that the door shutting behind you comes as a shock, jolting you towards him with the click of it and the deafening muffle of music behind it. Somehow, you think it’s more silent between you than if it wasn’t there at all.

You find a seat beside him, but just out of reach. An appropriate distance that he respects for now, polishing off his drink only to pour another.

“Virgin, huh?” he begins, brow raising like he doesn’t quite believe it, “How old are you?”

“I can show you my driver’s licence, if you like,” you shoot back, probably too defensively, but he grins all the same at you.

“That’s not what I meant,” and it’s only when he offers you a glass that you realize he’s poured you one from the crystal decanter resting on the table. “Just that, girl like you? It’s surprising, especially if it doesn’t mean anything to you. Why wait?”

His tongue twists your words, and you take a bigger sip than you probably should have of the liquor. It burns your throat, scrunching your face up in disgust that gets a deep laugh from the man beside you. He leans closer, and you can smell his cologne. He smells so _good_ that you think it can’t be fair. A snake, hiding under the veil of flower petals.

You take another too-large sip of liquor, and it burns a little less this time.

“I just,” you begin finally, knowing he’s awaiting your answer, “guess I never found the right partner.”

“In my experience,” he starts, and when he reaches forward to brush the tips of his fingers along the hand you have gripping your glass, you tense, knowing he’s caught you, “a girl waitin’ around for the right guy, means it’s worth something to you.”

You won’t tell him he’s right. Won’t give him the satisfaction of confirming the cruel amusement in his eyes. Your life meant more than whatever romanticized view of your first time that you nursed in the back of your mind, and he knew that.

So instead, you counter softly, barely a whisper as you desperately hope he’ll leave it at this, leave the wounds unopened and as little destruction in his wake, “Is it worth something to you?” He takes the glass from your hand, setting it on the table, and for a second you think he’ll have mercy on you.

It’s wishful thinking, really.

“It’s only worth the price you pay for it.”

James Barnes isn’t gentle, despite the lie his fingers whisper at your jaw, as they wrap to dig at the nape of your neck and pull you forward against his lips. You can’t taste the liquor on his lips, but you can smell it on his tongue as he claims your mouth sooner than you’d expected, a gasp muffled against his lips as your hands fly to his chest. First instinct is to push him off, but you force yourself to relax. To let this man do as he wants with you. That’s the deal, right?

There’s a hint of smoke on his tongue, and you place it with the scent of cigarettes in the air, but you’re thankful the alcohol must have cleansed him of whatever smoke he’d taken earlier in the day. Teeth scraping at your lip and hands digging into your hair, he takes as he pleases, and you don’t know what you expected from a man like him. Eyes welling with tears that you suffocate in your throat as the shadow of his beard scrapes against your skin. He’s overpowering, consuming, and you’ve completely lost in the fight, battle over before it’s even started.

You hate to admit, he’s a good kisser, as his fingers plunge into your hair and tug gentler than you expected, tongue finding your own and stealing your breath, all sense going along with it. You’re on fire, and you know he’s going to leave you burned by the end of this.

Hands make quick work of your clothes, pushing your blouse from your shoulders once the buttons yield to his fingertips. The straps of your bra no match for his intentions, as they blaze dark promises along your skin, letting the garment fall, slack against you until he strips you of it entirely. Your hands abandon his chest to cradle your own, escaping his kiss with a gasp at the cold nip of the air and how quickly he’s divested you of so many of your clothes. Pushing yourself up the lounge as he tugs his belt free.

He looks after you, parted lips and a dilated lust in his eyes, darkening them as he breathes between you while you pant, “Don’t go shy on me now, doll. We’re just getting started.”

“Just,” you shake, breathing hard and knowing you look foolish and scared, but it hardly puts him off any, if the hard curve at the front of his jeans is any indication, “just give me a second.”

He doesn’t, hands catching at the curve of your thighs and smoothing up them, only to tug you back down towards him. Your eyes avoid his as you catch your breath, head turned away from him on the cold leather of the couch, but that only allows him access to your neck, which he claims just as much as he had your mouth with his own. You don’t know what scares you more, the man or the size hinted within his pants.

You hardly feel courageous as you manage to stammer, “J-Just tell m-me, that this will— will cover my debt.”

“Oh, doll,” he hums against your throat before leaning back to brush his hand over your forehead, tender, but the look in his eyes is anything but kind, “it’s a good start.”

“W-Wait,” you jolt beneath him, but your hands are too preoccupied with hiding your chest to push the length of him from where he’s caged you in, “that’s not fair.”

_“If you knew how all this worked,”_ he throws your words back at you, a taunting edge to them, “then you’d know, anyone takes money from me, pays me back,” he breathes softly, fingers slipping down your throat to your clavicle, trailing down your arm feather-light _, “with interest.”_ It’s so fast, the pace at which you find yourself pinned down with his hips, this man between your knees, gripping your elbows to coax your arms from your shielding of yourself. He has the audacity to smile down at you, like he’s doing you a favor, “I’m fine with collecting your first payment, doll.”

He’s so mean, you could cry. You could scream, if it’d be any use. Hit him, even, if you could have gotten away with it, but even if you did manage to make it out of this club alive, he’d find you anywhere.

You knew how this worked, and your only hope was at his discretion.

You should have known better than to hope for a miracle.

Relaxing a bit beneath him, you let him strip your arms slowly from your chest, hands slipping to your side to allow him a proper look at you, but you still can’t dare to look at him, “How… how many payments am I looking at?”

“Let’s see how this first one goes,” and it’s so unfair, but you know there’s no arguing with him. You have no leverage, nothing to solidify your side of the arrangement, and you already had the scales tipped against you by your deadbeat brother the instant you walked in here.

You were going to hate Donnie until the day you died for this, you’re convinced.

“Okay,” you breathe, feeling the scrape of his jawline against your chest as he kisses from clavicle to shoulder, teeth and tongue drawing a shiver down your spine, erupting white hot heat in your stomach. Simmering, bubbling, like anticipation and fear, mingled together into such a strange concoction of emotions that you don’t know if you want him or you don’t right now, body betraying you when his hands brush along the curve of your breasts.

And he’s so cruel, that you curse him around a moan as he taunts from the valley of your breasts, fingers finding the pert buds of your nipples, “Make it worth my time, doll.”

You’re so humiliated, when you look at him, that you’re sure he can see every inch of vulnerability in your soul, and _likes_ it, when the shaky whisper of it comes from your lips, “You’ll have to… teach me what you like, James.”

Maybe it’s the innocence in your eyes, or the fear, but he crawls up your body to brush his lips against your own, ghosting his words there, “First lesson: you call me Bucky.” His mouth is hot, blazing against yours as he takes you once again, hands pushing up your thighs and taking the skirt there with them, bunching it around your waist. Fingers stroke over your cotton panties unexpectedly quickly, brazen and leaving you arching into him with the shock of the pleasure, fingers bunching in the white of the dress shirt over his shoulders. He wasn’t even fair in his undressing of you, still fully clothed against you.

He breaks the kiss when you whimper at the press of his fingers over your wet entrance, feeling the dampness of your panties and glancing down with an amused brow, “Pink, with a bow? Might need to see that I.D. of yours, after all, doll.”

“Bucky,” you breathe around a moan, wanting to tell him to _fuck off_ , but unable to with the way he tugs them to the side to touch you _for real_ this time. His fingers are bigger than your own, and even then the harsh curve of his palm pressing into your clit is rougher than you’re ready for, bringing you close all too quickly as you squirm under him.

“You ever touch yourself like this?” his lips ask against your jaw, blazing hot at your skin, and you know there will be marks left in his wake. You can’t even think to answer him, let alone unbutton his shirt as you clutch desperately to it, feeling his middle finger push into the tight warmth of your pussy with more brute force than gentle persuasion, a hint of pain to the pleasurable _fullness_ that comes with it. You clench around the digit instinctively, walls fluttering from within as he drags it with determination through your wet folds, “ _Fuck_ , you are tight.” It’s not too long, before he’s pressing a second finger at your entrance, and you’re yelping with the force of it.

“N-No, I can’t,” you gasp, squeezing around him harshly and making his descent difficult.

“Relax,” he urges, with a flick of his thumb at your clit that has you whimpering with the bursts of pleasure that come at his fingertips, distracting you from the _stretch_ of his fingers until he’s knuckle-deep and your thighs are shaking.

“That’s it, good girl,” he coos, breathing heavy as your leg catches his hip, desperate to hold onto _something_. “Gotta’ get you ready for me.” It’s about as much kindness as you’ll get from him, you figure, but you’re grateful nonetheless that he has the sense to have some semblance of patience with you.

And you have the sense to thank him for it, gasping his name as he starts up a pace with his fingers that has you an utter mess beneath him. It wasn’t a fair fight at all, but you were starting to like the struggle, as he curves his fingers within you and brings his lips back to yours to kiss you senseless. Fucking you _deep_ , reaching farther than you could ever hope to with his fingers, and you nervously remember that his dick is going to reach even _deeper_.

Saying you aren’t scared is about the biggest lie you could tell, right about now. Of course you’re scared. You have been since before you ever walked up to his door. You both know it, so there’s no use in trying to hide it now, especially with his hand buried between your thighs, rubbing circles of pleasure along your clit in anticipation of what’s to come.

So, instead, you decide to be honest. Blatantly so. Possibly, even more than he’s had in quite some time as you lean back and confess, soft, breathless against his tongue.

“Bucky, I’m _scared_ ,” begging, for more than just _this_ , between you, as you catch his eyes with the raw openness of your own, “please, don’t hurt me too bad.”

His face changes for an instant, and his pace falters, before he picks it up again and tears another wrecked sound from your throat. You hardly have the presence of mind to recognize if it’s compassion or a simple shock that’s flashed there, but he doesn’t give you the time to piece it together, breathing at your lips something that sounds more like a promise than anything you’ve had out of him so far.

“Don’t worry, doll, you’ll like it.”

You want to believe him so badly that it hurts, when his lips catch yours, breathless teeth and tongue clashing as he pulls moan after pathetic moan from your tongue. You’re so lost, coming undone unexpectedly at the curve of his fingers and a flick of his wrist, crying out against his tongue as your nails scrape along the clothed span of his shoulders and, for the life of you, you _love_ it. Arched into him as wave after wave of your orgasm washes upon you, crushed between him and the lounge, but somehow, despite the circumstances, he doesn’t leave you feeling dirty at the end of it.

Not even when his fingers pull out, taking with them the sloppy evidence of your arousal, trailed from finger to finger as he murmurs against your lips, low and raspy, “Unzip me, doll,” before slipping his fingers into the panting openness of your mouth. Your taste on his fingertips, you instinctively close your lips around them in the haze of your aftermath, fingers trailing down his chest to find the button of his jeans, doing what he says until he retrieves his fingers from your mouth to push at the open looseness of his jeans, sending them down his long legs until he kicks them to the floor.

And, god, he’s so big that you have to keep yourself from pulling away from him, yet you can feel yourself clench around nothing at the sight. Long and curved towards you, even this part of him is deceptively beautiful, leaving you reeling at the realization that he’s finally stripped himself of his shirt, when your eyes trail back up the dark hairs leading up his abdomen towards his chest.

“Gonna’ sit there and stare all day?” he taunts, edging closer with the lack of clothes barring you from him, hands slipping up your thighs to hitch them around his hips, propping your own up off the lounge with the solid weight of his own thighs beneath yours, “Or maybe you’d rather touch?”

You feel so dumb, but you can’t help to ask, hand reaching, but not touching, “Can— can I?”

His own hand takes yours, forcing it upon you until yours is wrapped around the length of him with his fist as the guide, “Lesson two: don’t ask for what you want, _say_ what you want.”

You try again, but the feel of him is foreign and new, and your concentration is strained by the hard weight of his dick in your hand, “I-I want to… to touch you, Bucky.”

“Then do it,” he growls, giving your hand a forceful squeeze, making you fully grip him instead of the feather-light touch you had been on the border of. “Take what you want, doll, or you’ll never get anything worthwhile.”

“What—” you swallow, stroking along the length of him and shooting a raised brow up at him, “What fortune cookie did you get that one from?”

His smile returns, just briefly, as his hips roll into your grip, and you feel him twitch in your hand before he groans, “Too sassy for… a girl in your position.” His hand takes your own, eyes sliding back to capture your gaze with an intense one of his own as he guides you to bring him to the wetness between your thighs, slipping him through your folds as his hips guide the movement. He grinds against your clit, and your head falls back, whimper at your lips.

“Tell me, Bucky,” you breathe, staring up at the ceiling as you feel the head of him press, blunt and terrifying, at your entrance, “when did taking something by force ever get you anything worthwhile?”

His breath is warm, fanning along your lips, as he draws your gaze back to find him with the hand he places on your jaw, “Got me _this_ , didn’t it?”

The way he splits you open, is like he wants to hurt you, so slow and persistent that the constant tension and pain fights with the pleasure along your face, until you’re crying out and he’s smothering it with his lips and the hand at your throat. Drives deeper, even when tears are streaming from your eyes, and all you can do is hold him closer by the claws of your hands until he’s settled deep within you, and you know the throb in your cunt can only be placated by the drag of him into you again.

It hurt, stung _deep_ , but you don’t know how much of it is split between your virginity and his sheer size, until he drags back and your wince erupts into a moan as he drives back into you with just as much calculated precision as his first blow was. You’re raw, decimated, as he fucks up and into the trembling heaven between your thighs, groaning deep and low into your mouth as his pace picks up, until all you feel is the slight sting and overwhelming pleasure of him filling you over and over again.

It was overwhelming, and you don’t know if the wetness slipping down your ass is from your own arousal or blood.

He’s merciless now, with the slam of his hips against your own and the lewd sounds of him driving into you repetitively. Ripping cries and screams from your throat only to be quieted against his mouth, but even then you think it could be heard through the muffled privacy of the door. The hand that isn’t at your throat hikes up your leg, catching it over his shoulder to hit you _deeper_ , and you can’t breathe with the intensity of it.

“B-Bucky— I— Oh, _god_ — I—” you can’t even speak properly, between his dick splitting you open as well as it was and the broken kisses that, truthfully, were more appropriately one long one, separated by your desperate noises and words. He’s quiet, aside from the groans he leaves at the altar of your tongue, up until your fingers find his cheek so tenderly that he pulls back like he’s been burned.

“You close?” he rasps, breathless, down at you, hand at your throat keeping you where he wants you, and your own finds a grip at his wrist, needing to hold onto something as his pace jolts you along the lounge. You close your eyes, the truth of it on your brow, and strangled in your throat by a moan you bite back on your bottom lip to instead nod where words have failed you. “Then cum— let me see it— let me see you.”

He takes everything, from the way his hand grips at your throat and the other holds your thigh high so he can thrust a bruising pace into your cunt, you hardly have the chance to react when it washes upon you, much like the first, but _oh so_ different. It’s so intense your vision goes first, seizing up tight against him, a fluttering vice against his dick that completely halts his thrusts to a slow rock as a strangled sound is gasped from his own throat at the feeling. His fingers tighten on your skin, and for a second you can’t breathe, choking around his hand until he lets up, and your shudder wracks through you while he pushes himself through the brunt of your climax.

You barely have time to think, let alone recover, when he slips from within you to push your thigh from his shoulder and manhandles you onto your stomach.

No time to prepare for the drive of him into you once more from behind, pain and pleasure intermingling at the sensitive ecstasy he earns from you, gritting into your ear, “I’m not done yet, doll. Hope you don’t mind.”

_Mind?_ The man has you fucked messy beneath him, and has the gall to ask you if you _mind?_ You really could slap him, you think, but when he kicks open your legs with his thighs and tugs you up by the waist, setting a brutal pace, all notions of that are scrambled from your brain.

You’re writhing beneath him, hands slipping along the leather of the lounge cushions beneath you in a desperate need to find purchase on something— _anything_ to ground you to this earth when he reaches around you to press thick fingers at your clit and slip them in tight circles there. You’re coming again, so sensitive and barely down from your last, keening his name in a broken whine that sounds hoarse, even to your own ears.

He either doesn’t expect it so soon, or was dangerously close to his own release, because he curses sharply behind you and tugs out, leaving you clenching and empty as his own orgasm spills along the curve of your ass.

The weight of him as he relaxes against your back is suffocating, and you squeak something to that effect as his lips find the curve of your shoulder, chest overheated and sticky with sweat against your back.

“So,” you breathe shallowly, under the weight of the man behind you and the labor of your orgasm, “how many more payments do I have?”

He groans thoughtfully, before his chin rests on your shoulder and you catch his eye with the turn of your face, just as blatantly selfish as ever, but twice as dangerous as when you’d last looked at him.

“Let’s see how the next one goes, doll.”

You don’t have the energy to argue him on it.


	2. Cash Me Out

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It comes time for your second payment, and you get a glimpse of the life your brother was involved in. You’re in too deep already, and you find yourself worrying that this well Bucky is dragging you down into is deeper than you can reach, before you drown. The hint of humanity he shows you, is enough to talk yourself into staying.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Uh,,,, I got carried away, but if it’s any consolation, there’s like 5k worth of smut in there? I think? And there’s a lot more plot than before!
> 
> Chapter Warnings: NSFW; dark themes; dubcon themes; mobster/mafia AU; dark!Bucky; dark!Steve; dark!Sam; mentions of blood, guns, violence/murder, gambling, and drugs (b/c it’s a mob!AU); the reader berating herself in some parts; oral sex; choking; unprotected sex, and, uhhh, I think that’s it?

##  **_Lamb Among Wolves_ ♠️ _Part II ; Cash Me Out_**

Photo sources: [1](https://megmeg-chan.tumblr.com/post/617533527743922176/violadvis-sebastian-stan-and-shailene) | [2](https://megmeg-chan.tumblr.com/post/617543820706463744/all-the-crackships-sebastian-stan-as-frank-in) | [3](https://yourjamesbuckybarnes.tumblr.com/post/617547098003537920) | [4](https://yourjamesbuckybarnes.tumblr.com/post/190928145041/aestheticlockscreen-pyscho-aesthetics-666)

* * *

There’s something to be said, for a warm shower. The heat, soaking into your skin and relaxing the tension in your shoulders, the water pulsing against your scalp, as you scrub yourself until you achieve that refreshingly clean feeling that would follow you for the next hours to come. The steam opened your lungs, made you feel like you could breathe in a way that always made you feel like you hadn’t properly been able to appreciate oxygen the way you were supposed to before. By the end of it, you had to tear yourself from the wandering thoughts, to dry yourself and reenter the world anew.

This shower, was none of those things.

Yes, it was hot, but the heat did nothing to placate the knots in your stomach, or the tightness of your shoulders. You had scrubbed yourself clean of the slight staining of dried blood against your thighs, but even without the small evidence, you could still feel the dull ache in your lower abdomen. A reminder, combined with the blemishes, purpling along your neck to track his path down your chest. The steam swirled around you, as your fingers smoothed across your skin, gingerly pressing to the mark he’s left at the curve of your left hip. You lay your hand above it, squinting down through the steam, as you map the distinct mar of a handprint, where the black metal of his prosthesis had gripped you a little too tight in the heat of the moment.

You feel like you can barely breathe, with the senseless urge to cry bubbling in your throat, combined with the dusting of the steam from the hot water pouring over your head. Your hand abandons your hip, reaching for the faucet to turn down the temperature with a quickness that you can hear reflected in the slight groan of the pipes, feeling it turn near cold too quickly, and erupting your skin with goosebumps.

Tilting your head back, you quell your quivering lip, scolding yourself for the tears that well in your eyes. _What did you expect? You knew what you were getting yourself into, with an offer like the one you’d made. No matter how much you hated to, you still had to admit, he had made you feel good._

But there’s still the unwavering hint of something akin to grief in your chest, at the precious cost of squaring your brother’s debt. That you’ve given something so intimate and, regardless of how much you wanted to refuse it, special to a man you barely knew— and managed to terrify you— when you could have lost it to someone who made you feel, at the absolute bare minimum, comfortably _safe_. Even worse, there’s the overpowering trepidation at the thought that you would wind up paying even more dearly for Donnie’s sins than even this.

 _Foolish, that’s what you are_ , you decide. A scoff at your lips as you feel the hiccup bubbling up your throat, wiping the cold water from your face and stepping from under the spray to grip at the handle of the stall. _You were naïve for ever thinking that a man like him would play fair with you, when he had always made the rules to begin with._

 _“Let’s see how the next one goes,”_ that’s what he’d said, wasn’t it? As he laid his lips along your shoulder like it meant something— like he wasn’t using you like a toy for his amusement. He had broken his own façade, when he’d pulled himself from you and thrown you a handkerchief— which, _who even kept those anymore,_ like he’s eighty-five— and told you with none of the gentleness that he’d used to kiss your shoulder, _“Clean yourself up, doll.”_

You were so stunned by it, so dazed that any hope of a defense was entirely obliterated as you clutched the pathetic bit of fabric while he tugged his trousers back up his legs and threw on his shirt. It was half-buttoned by the time you snapped out of it, only to look down at the white cloth in your hands with absolute confusion, wondering _what the hell_ he intended you to do with it, up until the point that you had noticed the mess you were in along the lounge.

It was humiliating, and you balled the linen in your fist, crumpling the navy block-print embroidery of _J.B.B._ along its curved corner, before throwing it at him. You must have been out of your mind, because any ounce of sensible fear you held for him had been stripped in that sheer instant, overpowered by the _offense_ and _palpable anger_ at him for discarding you like this. It had hit him, square in the chest, right above where he had been in the middle of buttoning his shirt, and in the back of your mind you had been shocked he’d managed to catch it before it fell to the ground.

Your chest was heaving, as you glared at him, more in defiance than truth when you dripped with sarcasm, “I don’t need your rag, _thanks_.”

When he had smiled at you, it left you nearly as stunned as when a slight laugh escaped him, both with the unexpectedness of it as much as the slap in the face that was how ridiculously attractive he was when he smiled— really, fully smiled. Barnes had pointed a long finger in your direction, with the same hand he gripped the messy remnants of his handkerchief in, as his smile settled into an amused grin.

“Fine, if you want to go out there looking like _that_ — I’m not gonna’ stop you, but some of the customers might think you’re one of my girls, and try to give you a tip.”

It took every ounce of your withering self-control not to curse him, right there, as you hastily righted your skirt and scrambled for your shirt to rip it over your head, before glaring back at him once you realized he had been watching you with that same twisted mirth the entire time.

Reiterating, “I’m good, _thanks_.” Standing from the lounge, you find regretfully that you have to walk by him to reach the door, cutting haughtily as you drew closer, “Don’t worry, no one will _ever_ mistake me for one of _your_ girls, Bucky.”

When he had grabbed you by the arm, keeping you still with the tight grip he had on the crook of it, whatever high you were riding from the roll in the hay you’d had with him was shattered. He pulled you close, your reflexive yelp met by a harsh press of his lips to your forehead. The short kiss was terrifyingly baffling, before his grip relaxed on your arm only to be replaced along your jaw, tilting your head up to force your gaze to meet his.

_“Remember who you’re talking to with that attitude, doll.”_

You remember how cold they had looked, all ice beneath the veil of amusement in them. A startling contrast to the blazing press of his lips as he kissed you once more. You don’t know what you hated yourself for more, melting into it the way that you did, or letting him have the last word for fear of revealing the whimpering sound you were desperately smothering in the back of your throat.

_“I’ll be in touch when it’s time for your next payment.”_

Your wet forehead presses against the glass shower door, brow furrowed in a silent anger at yourself, voice quivering in a soft whisper, nearly drowned with the pour of your shower, “Silly, stupid girl— you’re just a game to him.”

You didn’t know whether to be worried or excited for when he eventually grew bored of you, because what would that possibly mean? Would he let you off the hook, or would you find him to be even more ruthless than he’d already displayed?

Your escape from the shower comes in the hasty shutting off of the cool drizzle entirely, before pushing yourself from the cage of it and into the even colder air— if only to escape the overthinking that came all too easy to you within it. It’s easy to focus yourself on the tedious routine of drying and dressing yourself, choosing dark sweats rather than your brighter pajamas to retire in, simply because they’re the first things you lay your eyes upon. Your feet drag along the shag carpet of your apartment, too exhausted regardless of the sunset barely peeking over the horizon to thoroughly dry your minutely damp hair.

In the back of your mind, you think you should’ve taken one of those puppies the third-floor’s Mrs. Moore had offered you in the middle of last summer, as the thing would have been large and grown by now, which would at least leave you with a more secure feeling in the wake of today. It would make the night smoother, and maybe you would have slept better than you did, with a sixty-pound mutt guarding the foot of your door.

The ups and down of the night makes you sleep in longer than you had wanted, regardless of your day off from work, and sends you startling awake at the sound of a loud banging at your front door. Rolling from your bed, you pad towards the door, still shaking the exhaustion from your bones, somewhere between hoping whoever it was would just give up and the mild curiosity of the midday interruption to your sleep.

Before you can reach the door, the knocking stops, and by the time you peek through the peephole, all you catch is a glimpse of what looks to be a delivery man abandoning your doorstep. The slip of the door chain and a turn of the deadbolt reveal your package, a soft gasp escaping you at the sight of it.

White roses, what must be about fifty of them, tucked into an elegant vase. The card is of substantial paper, ivory and thick, as it pronounces itself from the midst of ghostly petals, and all you can think, as you lift the vase into your hands, is that the poor guy’s left it at the wrong door.

You tuck the bottom of the glass into your right arm, cradling it carefully in order to pluck the letter from its holder to get a good look at which of your lucky neighbors you needed to leave it with, the slightly lemony floral scent invading your lungs on your inhale. When you do catch sight of the address, the vase almost slips from your grip entirely.

There had been no mistake, it _was_ addressed to you.

A frown etching into your brow, you retreat back into your apartment, taking the bouquet with you to eventually abandon on your kitchen counter. It’s ungraceful and without care, the way you rip into the envelope, dissatisfaction only deepening along your features as your suspicions are confirmed.

> _Doll,  
>  _ _I’m sending a car for you at 7P.M. Find something nice to wear for me.  
>  _ _\- Bucky_

“Oh, _asshole_ ,” you growl, glaring back to the bouquet with a fiery passion. He thought you didn’t have anything to do tonight? Or, even more damnably overreaching, did he think he was more important than whatever you would have planned?

Not that you _had_ made plans, but still, it was the sheer _principle_ of it. No one had told you what to do since you escaped the home of your miserable drunk of a father at eighteen, and you weren’t about to fall back into old habits now.

He must be so used to telling people what to do, so used to getting what he wants out of people, that he thought he could treat you the same, but the truth is—

Your violent grip on the note relaxes slightly with the defeat of the revelation. He _could_ tell you what to do, like this. You _were_ at his beck and call. He held all the power in this… could you even call it a _relationship_? You didn’t want to, but the alternative was something you didn’t even want to think about.

Grinding your teeth, you press your foot on the pedal of your trash can, and dispel as much annoyance as you can with the tossing of the crumpled note into it. A beat passes, as you glance towards the bouquet— that _irritatingly beautiful,_ pure white bouquet— before it soon follows the note into your garbage, and the knowledge that it’s probably a hundred dollars worth of James Barnes’ money down the toilet is enough to set a smile back onto your face, before the lid shuts with a satisfying thunk.

It’s enough to keep it there as you reluctantly set the alarm on your phone with plenty enough time to be ready for whatever he had planned for you tonight, as a newer, more hopeful resolution comes to your mind. Nearly enough to quell the bubbling unnerving confirmation in your stomach that he had, in fact, known where you lived, and the sneaking suspicion that the flowers were more a taunt of that then a day-after gift.

If this was a game to him, you might as well play it for all it’s worth.

* * *

You can’t stop yourself from questioning it verbally, this time, looking him up and down skeptically as he holds the door of the car open for you.

“Are you even _old enough to drive?”_

Peter was dressed differently tonight— and you were starting to realize more and more that he was more a personal errand boy than hardened criminal, as he flushes in annoyance and defends, “I’m seventeen!”

 _“Seventeen?”_ your voice hitches on the word, and he gestures impatiently towards the inside of the car before you can fully go off on how he should be worrying about who he’s going to take to prom, rather than, whatever it was he was whisking you off to.

“Just, get in the car,” Peter huffs, almost pleadingly, before tacking on, “please. The boss’ll lose it if I’m late with you!”

Well, now you had to do it, didn’t you? If only for the kid’s sake. The irony was, he had already shown up thirty minutes later than he was supposed to, but you spare him from voicing it.

Chewing the inside of your lip, you relent, “Fine, but I don’t know why he sent you in the first place.” You grab the hem of your dress as you climb into it, sitting along the leather seats and tugging your dress fully into the car as you call up to him, “It’s gonna’ take longer than just taking the subway out to Brooklyn at this time of ni—”

And… Peter just shut the door in your face.

You can’t be too mad at him, because the sight of his advance around the car is so humorous that it sets a slight tilt to your lips. Somewhere between a jog and an outright run, his hand skids along the front of the car, long sleeve to his oversized dinner jacket nearly catching on the little statuette of a Jaguar in the middle of the hood in his haste to get to the driver’s side. It’s almost so funny, that when he enters the car, the slip of a gun from behind his back to set in the middle console is jarring.

He glances in the rearview, before shifting gears and pulling out of the front of your apartment building, eyes on the road, but all you can look at is his side profile. Part of you wants to ask him how he got wrapped up in all this— why he’s found himself carrying around a glock in the back of his pants to fight another man’s illegal war, but you already know the answer. You had seen it yourself, in too many kids you had gone to school with— the budding of it in _yourself_ , when you were younger, and your friends from back then, hell, most of them had never gotten out of it. Living on the fringes of society and running from the law or another gang at what felt like every corner. Territory and blood money seemingly all that mattered, because a roof over your head and bills that were paid was all it really amounted to at the end of the day, at least for the kids on the front lines. The sense of belonging was the most dangerous of all, because that was something not even their blood could give them.

You have to rip your eyes away from him, away from the gun set between you, to even breathe in the sudden silence of the car. He reaches forward, awkwardly filling the tension with the press of his fingers on the stereo, in some kind of swift attempt to drown it out with the music that plays, a bit too loud, but you don’t complain. You barely register it, really, with the sickening wave of nostalgia that rushes through you, drowning you in the slow lull of the past, bursting in memories behind your eyelids.

 _Fuck,_ you had never wanted to be this person again, but here you were.

And you know you’ve been dragged thoroughly back into it when you’re being pat down about forty minutes later— _damn traffic_ — by an outrageously tall man who responded only to Drax and had tribal-esque tattoos along nearly every inch of him, including his face. But you hadn’t realized, not really, _just how deep_ in it you were until he buzzes you and the kid through the door, and you find yourself within the seemingly abandoned warehouse.

It was anything but abandoned. Set up like a lounge bar, low lighting at near every corner, and packed to the brim with people in evening wear. Three large tables sat, right in the center of the vast room, flanked mostly by men, and a select few distinguished looking women, as you watch nearly half of your yearly salary’s worth of poker chips get pushed from diamond encrusted nails towards the center of the table by a particularly matronly woman.

_Oh, you were in over your head._

“Raise,” her voice is confident, if not a bit overconfident with age and what you’re assuming is the good hand she’s been dealt, while the dealer clarifies after her.

“Pot raised to one hundred thirty-five thousand.”

“Call,” and there went the remaining half of your year’s salary, passed by the man beside her towards the center of the table. Now, you weren’t so sure if her hand was as good as you initially thought, or if these people were really _that_ filthy rich.

Both, was probably closer to the answer.

Peter has to tug you by the arm to shake you out of it, and it takes a moment for your head to follow your feet as you blindly wander in the direction he leads you, “The boss is over there, at the back table. We’re already late.”

 _Was this what Donnie was involved in?_ Illegal gambling was one thing, but illegal high-stakes poker was another entirely. Just being here could land you with a felony, you were pretty sure, and— _was that a senator at table two?_

The closer you get, the more certain you are, until you rip your eyes from the politician to train it on the destination Peter’s herding you towards. The back table, furthest from the door and nearest the curved bar, with Barnes at the end of it, shifting two light blue chips together, over and under and over again, seemingly thinking. His eyes shift from the table, up and over the head of the man sitting across from him, to land on Peter first, then you.

He was smirking, behind the veil of his hand at his lips, strumming along his beard. When he shoots you a wink, you hate that you can feel the heat rising to your cheeks.

“What are _you_ doing here?” gives you a welcome distraction, but you’re unfortunate enough to notice it’s the blonde tower of the man Steve Rogers, who glares down at you before glancing to Peter for a more abrupt explanation.

_“Boss sent me to—”_

“I was invited,” you and Peter speak over each other, but your tone is more cutting, before your arms cross over your chest and you meet his skeptical accusation head on, “just ask Bucky.” You hold up a finger, “Or, better yet, kick me out. Give me an excuse _not_ to be here, I beg you.”

His defensive demeanor seems to mellow, if only slightly, at the explanation, and a glance over his shoulder towards the man in question confirms it, “In that case, come with me.” You watch as he tucks a poker chip— the same bright blue that Bucky was fiddling in his fingers with, into the breast pocket of Peter’s dinner jacket. “And you— cash this in and get you and your aunt something nice, kid. You can go on home.”

“Wow, thanks, Cap!” his grin is almost blinding as he fishes the chip out, and you know it must be worth more than you can figure, because Peter just about evaporates in front of your eyes with how quickly he moves through the crowd and towards the cage set at the front of the building.

“Cap? Where’d you get that name from,” slips from your lips as you move alongside him, half-compliant, half-forced by the hand he places in the small of your back as he leads you closer to the table. You really hoped it wasn’t because he was known for popping caps—

“The army,” is Steve’s response, and it only leaves you with more questions as you look back up at him, near to asking him, but he stops you with a slight nudge at your back. “Go on, he’s gonna’ want to see you.”

“W-Wha— Right now? I don’t want to interrupt the game— isn’t that a big no-no, when it comes to poker?” you resist his surprisingly strong grip and push back against it, catching your footing on the slick concrete, glad you’d chosen more sensible heels than was probably appropriate for the setting in which you found yourself.

Blue eyes stare back into your own with only a hint of annoyance, “You really don’t get it, do you? He’s _in charge_ — He does what he wants.” Another, gentler encouraging shove at your back has you stepping forward this time, as Steve insists, “No-one is going to say a word about Buck’s girl comin’ to see him at the table, and you’re not the first one to do it.”

You want to tell him that _you’re not_ , but it feels like your tongue is made of lead, as soon as your eyes lock with Bucky’s and you find that Steve has strategically maneuvered you too close to turn back now. You’ve already caught the attention of some of the other players, and if you turned around now, you’d look like some ditsy idiot who had too much to drink and wandered too close to the tables.

So you take a breath and straighten your back, moving carefully along the outskirts of it until you pass the dealer, and come up beside Bucky, reminding yourself to _play the game._

His hand comes to your waist when you’re within arm’s reach, pulling you closer and forcing your hand to come down on his shoulder to steady yourself while you shoot him a warning in your eyes. He only smiles wider.

“There you are. You’re late.”

“Fashionably,” you hum. “The subway would have been faster, but you _insisted_ on sending the car.” As if there had been any debate at all.

“Can’t let you roam the subways dressed like that, can I?” the way his eyes slip down your form is enough to set your skin ablaze in goosebumps, a shiver fluttering down your spine. You know he’s lying, because your dress is more a cocktail one than an evening gown, like the other women in the room, because _nice_ isn’t really definitive enough in itself to leave you with the clarity to know what to wear tonight.

He shouldn’t be able to have this effect on you, but this close to him, with his hand fitting into the same aching bruise he had left the day before, you find your mind flipping back to those specific moments like the pages of a book. It doesn’t help that he’s a flesh-and-blood visual aid, and his thumb is tracing circles just above where the strap of your panties hitched along your hips. He notices— you can see it, in the way his grip tightens and the cruel amusement that crinkles the corners of his eyes when he smiles, “Aren’t you going to gimme’ a kiss, doll?”

It’s sick, how you get the feeling that he _likes_ the embarrassment that flashes in your eyes, in the stammer of your voice as your gaze flicks to the other members of the table, who were either intrigued by the spectacle or annoyed at the delay of the game. It felt like all eyes were on you, and you know that in a room full of poker players, it’s easy to see right through your confident façade.

So, you let yourself feel it.

The raw, churning flip of embarrassment in your stomach, as you chide him slightly, softly asking that he relent _, “Bucky.”_ Because you aren’t one of the girls he’d usually have on his arm, so seemingly self-assured in their beauty and sexuality, leaving no question as to how they had managed to get here, or who they were with, but maybe that’s what made you endearing. You could only hope it didn’t make you look the fool you felt like.

Your hand squeezes his shoulder, and you’re surprised that he does have mercy, if only a little bit, “Just a small one. For luck.”

It’s still too much to handle for your racing heart, however, and as you bend, you find yourself aiming for his cheek, rather than his lips. The brush of trimmed stubble scratching against your lips, as you lay them soft there, lingering a moment as you hear him murmur into your ear, so quiet only you can hear.

“Tell Steve to keep an eye on the man in the gray suit, won’t you?” your brow furrows, as you lean back ever so slightly to catch his eyes, a seriousness behind the teasing exterior, as he breathes, “I think he’s cheating.”

A slight tilt of your head in understanding, _so this was what he wanted you to kiss him for._

You stand tall once more, “Good luck.”

“Thank you, doll,” you’re barely out of his grip when you hear the sound of two chips hitting the table, and his voice calls out, “I raise.”

God, it had been his turn. He had really just made them all wait, until he was through with you, to play his hand. You glance back, when you finally make your way over to Steve, finding Bucky to be focused on the other players, rather than you. Two bright blue chips added to the pot in front of him. Had he known his play, before you even went over?

“So, what is it?” Steve asks casually, drink in his hand as he holds it out to you. You blink, before he chuckles, “It’s not poisoned, or anything.”

“Uh, thanks,” you awkwardly take the drink. It was different than the one Bucky had given you yesterday, tall and fruity in a flute glass that seemed like the kind of drink they’d serve if you were on a yacht sailing somewhere in the Caribbean. It smells of mangos and strawberries, but there’s a spark of pineapple in the aftertaste, and you find you enjoy it much better than the hard liquor Bucky had treated you to. You’re surprised, it didn’t seem like the kind of drink Steve would be into, “This is actually pretty good.”

He doesn’t confirm or deny your theory, instead repeating, “What did Buck say?”

“He wants you to watch that guy in gray,” you nod towards the player in particular, who was lifting his cards to check them once more. “Apparently, he thinks he’s a cheater, but I don’t know how anyone could cheat with this many people watching them.”

“They get creative, trust me,” Steve sighs, leaning on the bar counter as he watches. “No one wants to owe money to Bucky, after all.”

“I guess you do this a lot?”

“Do what?” he spares you a glance and a curious look.

“Use women as your personal carrier pigeons mid-game?” you don’t think he expects it, how blunt you are, because his lips quirk upwards slightly and he gives you a peculiar look, like he wants to laugh but can’t quite bring himself to do it. He doesn’t need to answer, the truth of it is written all over his face. “Next time you need a message boy, send Peter,” you sip your drink one last time, setting it back on the bar with a clink as you turn your body to face him, “because I’m not doing that again. I don’t want to be involved, in any of this.”

“Well, you are,” he quips, just as bluntly, but his smile is gone. “The question is, are you going to help, or are you going to keep whining about it? I don’t know how much more of _that_ I can take—”

“Extra favors weren’t part of the deal,” you hiss, “and _illegal_ favors definitely weren’t. I shouldn’t even be here—”

“Again, _you are,_ ” Steve levels you with his stare this time, silencing you entirely at the heat behind it. He’s had enough, and you can see it in the stern authority in which he looks down upon you. “I’m not going to tell you that I understand what exactly Buck’s doing— fucking around with your head like this and making whatever kinda’ deal he did— but don’t for a second think that means you have a choice in this. You do what he says, when he says, and you keep your mouth shut about it.” The harshness in his tone softens, only a bit, and you think you see a glimmer of pity in his cerulean blues, “Be glad— you only had to deliver a message tonight.”

Your mouth has gone bone dry at his words, starving for saliva as you try to piece together your thoughts with the unease rocking in your stomach. It’s like he’s slapped you in the face, shaken the thought of your volition in all of this to its very core, with just a few simple words. Maybe protesting, wasn’t the way to survive in this new world you’d found yourself in.

You sound smaller than you wanted to, more defeat than you liked to admit, lacing your own voice, when you wonder, “And what about tomorrow?”

When he crosses his arms, they’re all muscle, even beneath the tailored jacket along his shoulders, “You want my advice? Make yourself indispensable, in one way or another. Then, you’ve got nothing to worry about.” He shoots you a suspicious glance out of the corner of his eye, “It’s what Donnie did. Got so fuckin’ close that we couldn’t see the forest for the trees.” Steve scoffs, sarcasm dripping from his tone, “Gotta’ give him that much.”

“I don’t want to be Donnie,” you sigh, leaning on the bar alongside him, “I never wanted to be like him.”

But it tastes like a lie. At one point, you had practically worshipped the ground that boy walked on, just because he was your big brother. Sure, you had just been a kid, silly and ignorant of the ways of the world— the lack of knowledge only further romanticizing the life he lived, even in his teens, but rose-colored glasses only get you so far before they break.

“I just want to pay what’s owed, and go back to being me— being _normal_ ,” you’re sure it sounds pathetic to a man like him, who is so solidified in this life that he’s probably forgotten what a normal one is like, but you didn’t want to have to make that distinction when it came to your own. And _this_? It was all too much to ask of you, if only because you were absolutely petrified of what came after it.

Maybe it’s the honesty behind your tone, or the slight shake to your fingertips, but Steve doesn’t laugh at you like you half expected him to. He just looks at you, _really_ looks at you, and nods, like he almost _gets it,_ in a way.

Then, he gives a distant sigh, “Life doesn’t always end up with you being the person you wanted to be. Sometimes, you’re just the person it made you.”

“Sounds like a quote,” you snort with a wry sort of humor, “did you pull that from the crime-lord handbook, or something?”

His lips tilt upwards in a genuine sheepishness, and you wonder what it looks like when he actually smiles— the kind of smile that you had seen on Bucky only the one time, “Or something.” He nods towards the poker table, “Buck said it, when we first got out of the army. Stuck with me, ever since.”

“I can’t believe that, though,” you protest, one last time. “We have to make our own choices. Try to actively be better than we were the day before, otherwise we’re all hopeless.”

“Doesn’t matter if you believe it or not— it’s the truth. Sometimes you just have to accept the hand you’ve been dealt and move on with your life,” he moves up behind you, leaning down slightly as he gestures casually to the man in the gray suit once more. “Take this guy, for instance. He’s been dealt a crap hand. If he’d accepted that and folded early in the pot, then he wouldn’t have to be dealt with for cheating.”

“How do you know he’s cheating?” your lips turn down in a frown. You’d been watching the guy just as well as Steve, you thought, and you saw nothing indicating a shady game.

Steve redirects your gaze with a nod of his head, “See that woman?”

She’s beautiful, in a floor-length gown that dips low in the front, tapping her manicured fingers rhythmically along her champagne glass twice before stilling them, “Yeah?”

“She’s his spotter,” he sounds more disappointed than angry, as he stands back to his full height and that’s when you notice Sam moving up beside her, telling her something from unreadable lips that makes her go pale. “Probably his wife or something,” you feel your blood run cold, as Sam takes her glass from her sharp, red nails, and that’s when you notice the rock adorning her finger, somewhere between him placing the champagne on the tray of a passerby server and the curl of his fingers on the crook of her arm. She looks terrified, glancing with wide eyes towards the man in the gray suit, and you can see how straight he sits up in his chair, cold sweat glistening in the low light, with Bucky glaring at him from across the table.

And it’s so casual— like he was mentioning the weather, or the fact that he had Gucci shoes adorning his feet, when Steve raises his beer to his lips and takes a swig, “Looks like their babysitter’s gonna’ be workin’ overtime tonight.”

 _What were they going to do to them?_ God, you didn’t even want to know, really. The hairs on the back of your neck stand up, and you get that same demanding feeling to _run_ that you’d had yesterday before walking into the VIP room, even though you knew it wasn’t your life on the line. At least, not at the moment.

It’s not Bucky’s turn, but when his eyes catch those of Steve’s alongside you, he interrupts the next player’s call, clicking his chips as he lifts and drops them slightly on the poker table, “Get him outta’ here, Steve.”

It feels like you aren’t even really there, as your heart pounds in your ears. Watching Steve walk towards the back of Gray Suit’s chair, curling his fingers in a less than friendly way along his shoulder. The man jumps in his seat, despite how terribly he seemed to be trying to hold onto his composure.

In the back of your mind, creeping up your neck, the sneaking suspicion that they’ve done this for your sake— waited until you had arrived to enact their wrath— sparks behind your eyelids. It leaves your fingers cold, shaking as they clutched your drink. This was a warning to _you_ , as much as it was to anyone else in this room, and you couldn’t be convinced otherwise.

“Looks like your luck’s run out, buddy,” Steve smiles down at him, all teeth, but no one in the room could be stupid enough to believe the fake kindness there. His eyes were dark, and it wasn’t a question when he asks, “Let’s have a talk, you and me,” he points a ringed finger towards where Sam stood, more restraining than holding his wife’s elbow, “and the missus, yeah?”

It feels like the whole room stills, and you know he’s caught more attention than just yours, because the silence that ripples along the room comes in cascades, with Bucky’s table at the epicenter. You hear confused whispers, hushed explanations, as the chatter dulls to a low murmur, barely audible above the music that played throughout the underground poker club.

“What’s this about?” Gray Suit asks, trying to play dumb, but you watch his suit crumple a bit as Steve’s grip tightens. It makes you think, the slight reluctance had only served to dig him a deeper hole, “We’re— We’re in the middle of a game, here, man.”

“Yeah, you are,” Steve nods sympathetically, and it’s almost so genuine that you could believe it, were it not for the way every aspect of him— his imposing posture, the tight grip he still held, the ice in his eyes— screamed the opposite. He didn’t care about this man, not in the slightest. “But, you know, we don’t like it when cheaters play at our tables.”

With few words, the spotlights back at Bucky, and the echoing click of his chips along the table that seems accentuated with the hush of conversation in the room, “And I have a bad habit of taking it personal, when it’s one of _my_ games.”

Steve’s eyes are trained on the brunette, whose stare ranges on murderous, before they meet those of his underboss, and a dismissive nod is all it takes for the talking to be over.

You jump despite yourself, when Steve nearly drags the man up from his chair, pushing him towards his wife just enough to move his shaky feet. His hand catches the back of his collar in a fist, as he grins over his shoulder.

Sam meets it with a casual smile, hand slipping to her waist to tug her into his side, “Let’s have that talk, you two. If you’ll just follow us.”

You don’t stick around to find out where they drag them off to, and by the time you reach the front of the warehouse, the conversation is just as roaring as it was before, and the games are back on. Your chest is heaving, when you bust out into the night air, past Drax and onto the brick wall you catch in the palm of your hands. You think you might throw up—

Not a one of those people was going to say anything— None of them cared what happened to that couple— even though they _knew_ it would probably end with them in the river.

Not even that fucking senator. You spit onto the ground, and it tastes like blood in your mouth, but on the asphalt, it’s just as clear as ever. All you can think, ringing in your mind, is how _you’re glad you didn’t vote for him._

A hand meets your shoulder, and you jump away, a scream crawling up your throat, but it catches at the sight of the tall bouncer— and you don’t know if it should have.

“You’re the Boss’ new girl, right?”

You wish everyone would stop calling you that.

“I’m not—” you start to tell him, but he doesn’t care, more of an annoyance than actual interest along the twitch of his brow, as he points over his shoulder with his thumb back towards the warehouse.

“He tell you you could leave?” he interrupts, voice deep and disinterested, before he stands a little straighter, “If not, ya’ better get your ass back in there, ‘til he does.”

“I just—” you look up at him, this huge lug of a man, and doubt even the terror in your eyes or the plea in your voice will placate him, but damn you if you didn’t try, “I just needed some air. I got sick,” you lie through your teeth, “drank too much.”

He squints at you in the nightlight, before grunting in acceptance, “Sorry, take your time.”

When he backs off, resuming his spot at the door, your back flattens along the hard brick, and you try your hardest not to hyperventilate. None of these people’s hands were clean— and with each moment that passed, you could swear you felt more and more blood dripping from your own.

You hated it, but you collect yourself as best you can, and walk back towards the entrance. Drax nods at you when you pass, but you don’t look at him— not really. You don’t look at anyone, until you reach the bar, and slide into a stool alongside some rich-looking older man, who is as nameless as he is faceless tonight.

You order a water, and wait for the feeling of dread to relieve itself from your stomach, but the moment you glance back towards the table— and find another gentleman sitting where Gray Suit had been, it lingers.

“What’s the buy-in, around here?” you ask the older man to your right, and he looks at you like you were a child, all condescension and disbelief that you could even be here without knowing the ins and outs of this place. You placate him, if only a little, with a soft shrug and a complacent smile that you hope covers your unease, “I’ve been abandoned by my, _uh_ , date— and I’m afraid I don’t know much about places like these.”

“It varies,” he rolls his thumb over his wedding band, spinning it absentmindedly on his finger. “The front two tables are lower, at around fifty and a hundred grand a piece, but the back one, where Mister Barnes plays?” His chin tilts upwards, accentuating his statement, “That one’s got a five-hundred thousand buy-in, on nights like tonight. Sometimes, it’s higher.”

 _God_ , you wanted to die at the sound of it. If Barnes was dumping _at least_ five-hundred grand on just the buy-in, you knew your brother’s debt of two-million was a drop in the pot to him. It meant nothing, tangibly to him. It was just the fact that it was _his_ — and that it had been taken from him.

“Too rich for my blood,” your laugh sounds bitter, even to your ears, but the gentleman’s returning laugh is genuine, as he pushes his hand through salt-and-pepper hair.

“I could spot you, if you wanted to play at the lower tables,” your eyes snap up to his, and you’re shocked to find he’s entirely serious.

“I’m worried taking you up on that will be more costly than I can afford,” you shoot back.

“No, nothing like that,” he grins, cocky. “I’d just find it funny to have an amateur play at one of those tables— might rile the veterans up a bit if you won on beginner’s luck.”

This time, you really do laugh, chuckle more genuine, “Wouldn’t that be a shock?” Your glass is half-full, and you can barely feel the dread anymore with the distraction of his conversation, “Thanks, but I’m afraid I’ve still gotta’ refuse your offer, ‘cause I doubt it would be a good look if some guy I just met at the bar bought me a fifty-thousand buy-in.”

“Which one of them is the lucky son of a bitch who’s stupid enough to leave you sitting at the bar to watch while he plays?”

“I don’t know if I should tell you,” you glance out of the corner of your eye at him, a smile dancing at your lip.

“What? Is he married?” he jokes, like that would be the most scandalous event of the evening.

“I fucking hope not,” you take a drag of your water, rolling your eyes, before you relent at his expectant stare. “It’s supposed to be Barnes.”

His brows raise as the corners of his lips draw down in surprise, a hum of interest in his throat as he jokes, it surprisingly not phasing him like it did you, “Ah, so he’s got a new favorite in you, does he?” His eyes slip to the man in question, as he leans against the bar while you try to drown yourself with the gulp of water you take, “Guess it’s not all chocolates and roses to be on his arm— sometimes you’ve gotta entertain the conversation of a boring guy like me while he’s busy, huh?” It’s all jest and sarcasm, and it pulls your lips back up into a smile, and you’re almost back to the slight unease that had met you at the door of this place— so close to as normal as you’d ever felt here, but then a friendly hand comes down in the back of the man across from you, and you nearly jump out of your skin to see who it’s attached to.

“Tony, glad you made it,” Steve grins, but it’s genuine, and reaches his eyes as he greets _Tony_. Tony offers Steve his hand, and he shakes it fondly, while you stare at him and try not to think about however he had _handled_ Gray Suit and his wife.

“Yeah, Pepper’s out of town on business, so I figured why not show my face for once, yeah?” he laughs, before his hand returns to his drink, and Steve’s eyes return to you when Tony gestures, “Glad I did, ‘cause this one’s more interesting than the usual girls your friend brings around.”

“Yeah, she is… Thought you’d run off on us, when I couldn’t find you,” there’s a skeptical spark behind his eyes, his grin no longer reaching it, and you know he knows that’s _exactly_ what you did. “Speaking of Buck, he’s been lookin’ for you.”

“Looking for me?” you parrot, with a scoff, “He’s still playing poker— how’s he been looking for me?”

 _“I’ve_ been looking for you,” he clarifies, and you can tell it eats at him a little that he’s playing the role of your babysitter, if only partly, tonight. “The game’s almost over, and he wants you there— for luck.”

The girl you were, when you entered this place, would have told him to fuck off– you weren’t a pair of dice on his dashboard.

The girl you were now, though, does what he says— even though the surging urge to do both swims in the forefront of your mind.

“Gamblers and their superstitions,” it’s under your breath and distasteful, but Tony’s laugh is genuine all the same, even though Steve doesn’t. You look towards Tony, holding your glass up in a slight dismissal to the only man you’ve been able to slightly tolerate tonight, “Well, duty calls.”

“No rest for the wicked, huh?” it’s a joke, and you desperately want to laugh, if only to ease the raging butterflies in your stomach with some unruly burst of hystericism, as you slip from your stool and try not to glare at Steve as you pass him.

“I wouldn’t know,” but you’re already further than you should be for them to hear the utterance on your tongue, as you move through the crowd, clinging to your near-empty glass of water until you catch sight of the far table. More ice than liquid at this point. It takes every ounce of your composure to slip your hand along his shoulder, as you come up behind him, but it doesn’t stop the dripping of sarcasm, “You summoned.”

Bucky pulls you closer, grip at your hip urging you down into his lap, and you feel the heated burst of embarrassment return to your face, as he hums, “Was wondering where you ran off to, doll. Don’t tell me, you thought of leaving before the game was even over?”

He was playing with you, making a show of displaying you as the very thing you had told him you would never be mistaken for— and you absolutely hate him in that moment.

Your smile, you don’t think, is strong enough to hide your distaste as you sweetly, too sweetly, brush his hair back with your fingertips, and purr, “And miss the chance to see you lose?”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” his grin only gets wider, and you think there’s a bit of a spark in his eyes when he clicks his chips against the table, and flexes his thigh under the weight of you, “Even when I lose, the house always wins.”

“Then why do you need me here?” you wonder softly in his ear, as the lone remaining player raises from across the table, “Doesn’t look like you need whatever luck I might bring you, if that’s the case.” You miss how high the pot’s become, because of the hitch of his breath in the shell of your ear.

“Of course I do, doll,” he breathes with a simple satisfaction, checking his cards once more before tossing some more chips into the pot, clearly checking the raise. “See, I don’t want to lose at all.”

“Players, show your cards,” the dealer announces, and you glance back towards the table as Bucky leans forward, his hand at the small of your back keeping you from slipping off him and into the floor entirely.

His opponent is young, maybe only a few years older than Bucky himself, a grin blossoming along his lips as he reveals his cards. All spades, in order, and even you don’t have to know much about poker to think that looks bad for Bucky.

“Straight flush,” the dealer announces, and the resounding gasp around the immediate borders of the table confirms your suspicions that it was a ridiculously good hand to have played. The dealer, though, is indifferent and professional, as he raises an open palm towards Bucky, “And you, sir.”

Bucky blows air from his lips, before he admits, “That’s a good hand you’ve got. Would have most folks runnin’ scared.”

“I’d consider it a personal victory to beat you at poker, Mister Barnes,” the guy grins a little wider. _Fucking brownnoser._

Maybe he was smart, though, because you weren’t quite sure if Bucky was the kind to take it personal if he lost, too.

“I’m afraid you’re gonna’ have to keep trying,” Bucky reaches forward, flipping his cards for everyone to see with a soft smile that has him dissolving back in his chair, “‘cause I met a queen in the last round, and she’s a real bitch.”

The coat of hearts, stacked in a ten, Joker, Queen, King, and Ace. By the time you look up, it seems all the blood has drained from the other player’s face, along with his grin.

“Royal flush,” the dealer announces, moving to push the winnings towards Bucky’s end of the table in perfect stacks, before splaying his palm face-up once, “the pot of one-million-two-hundred goes to Mister Barnes.”

The air escapes from your lungs all at once, and you barely feel Bucky’s grip tighten at your hip as he draws you closer, laughing, “I guess you are good luck, after all, doll.”

“One- _million_ two-hundred _thousand_?” you whisper reverently, looking down at the chips as Bucky plucks a bright blue chip from the top of the pile and places it in the palm of your hand.

“Consider it your split,” he murmurs into your ear, and you blink at him blankly, until he smirks, “The chip— it’s cashable for ten grand.”

You glance down to it, and _was it suddenly heavier,_ or was that all in your head?

“I should give it back to you, then,” you breathe, “to help pay my debt.”

His smile only falters a little, looking at you like he can’t quite understand you, “Don’t you want to buy yourself something nice with it?” You almost tell him that you’d rather buy your freedom, but he shakes his head, and closes your hand around the chip, “Keep it— Consider your debt twenty grand lighter.”

You smile— genuinely smile at him— before you can help yourself. Before you can remind yourself that it was only a drop in the pot of whatever was weighed against you, and you were paying him in things that were hardly capable of being kept up with in the long haul.

But the gratitude is real nonetheless, as you softly murmur between you, “Thank you, Bucky.”

This time, his smile really does falter, but the flash of confusion is short lived, because his eyes slip to the dealer, “Put this with the rest. That’s it for me tonight.”

“Yes, Mister Barnes.”

“What do you say we get out of here, doll?”

Even if it’s with him, you take the excuse to leave, “I’d like that.”

He drives an Aston Martin, or, more accurately, he had chosen to drive an Aston Martin tonight. It’s vintage and silver. When you joke about how he must think he’s James Bond, ( _What are you, James Bond?_ ) he smiles like he knows something you don’t, and it irritates you only a little, because folding yourself into the compact leather seats is much easier than having to pretend to be alright in that warehouse.

“Did you have fun?” he questions, probably more to appease the silence that met the low slur of jazz through the stereo, as you look out the window while Brooklyn blurs past. He drives fast, like he doesn’t care, but he’s so relaxed in the driver’s seat that it’s almost relaxing in itself— like he knows what he’s doing. You don’t answer him, and he spares you a glance out of the corner of his eye, pausing a bit too quickly at a stop light and lurching you in your seat, “It’s not that bad, you know.”

You’re too tired with the early morning hour and the relief of being anywhere but in that warehouse to cultivate the embering remnants of annoyance in the pit of your stomach into the burning rage you otherwise would have held, and instead choose to fix him with a raised brow and unamused stare _, “Oh?”_

He shifts gears, and the reds and greens of the passing lights swipe across his jawline as the streetlights curve around you, “You wound up liking it yesterday, didn’t you?”

You’re quiet this time, more from the plight of it, than from biting back the urge to deny his accusation. You’d been actively trying to ignore that moment— keep yourself from remembering it, and the feeling of it— up until this moment, and there he had gone and plowed through all your efforts once again.

When the car stops again, his hand abandons the steering wheel to slip along your thigh, encompassing and large in a way that forces your eyes to it, before you flick them up to find he’s staring at you like he had the night before. Dark, wanting, with a slight amusement at how flustered his every touch seems to leave you.

“I’m not _that bad_ , doll.” Your jaw clenches, and his eyes follow the movement, a smirk finding its way to his damnably kissable lips as he teases, “Or are you afraid that if you acknowledge it, you might find you actually like me?”

“You killed a man tonight— and his wife,” you whisper, and you shouldn’t be so meek, but you are, with the weight of his stare and his thumb running circles on your thigh.

His brows raise, and a laugh escapes him— a bark, light for the subject matter, before it dissolves into softer chuckles, when his eyes turn back to the road and he hits the gas again, “Kill them? I didn’t kill them, doll.”

“Just because _you_ didn’t actually do it doesn’t mean that—”

“I didn’t kill them,” he repeats, interrupting you with a squeeze at your thigh that effectively shuts you up, “or do ya’ want me to drive by their home to prove it to you? I can knock on their door, if it’ll make you feel better— maybe wake the kids, give him a right good scare to see me again tonight—”

“Don’t be cruel,” you huff, crossing your arms and turning back to the window, but even the shift of your hips can’t stop his hand from slipping up your thigh, fingers brushing dangerously close to the apex of it.

“No, if you’re gonna’ accuse me of murder, then I oughta’ defend myself, don’t you think?” he was having too much fun with taunting you.

His index and middle finger dig into your flesh in a way that’s solely to get your eyes to face him once more, and you snap them back to him in a mixture of confusion and hesitance, “What did you do to them, then? Break their kneecaps, or something?”

He snorts at that, “I think you’ve watched _The Godfather_ one too many times, doll.” If the mood was lighter, you would have told him that you can never watch _The Godfather_ too many times, but it feels inappropriate as he pulls onto a quieter street, lined with brick townhouses. Your heart jumps into your throat as he parks in the driveway of one, and gestures towards the door, porch light illuminating the entryway, “Go on, see for yourself. Go knock on their door.”

You gasp, looking at him as if he’d grown another head, “ _No_ , Bucky— okay, I believe you! Just, let’s get out of here—!”

“No, you’re so worried about them, I bet they’ll be _flattered_ —”

“I am _not_ knocking on a stranger’s door at two in the morning!” you hiss back at him, but his serious look breaks into a shoulder-shaking laughter, as his hand slips from your thigh to shade his lips, laughing into it.

“Bucky, please,” you almost beg, reaching out to grab his bicep and look at him pleadingly, “let’s go before someone sees us.”

To your horror, he unlocks the doors, shutting off the lights, but before you can tack another, more urgent, _please_ onto the end of your pleading, he gasps through his laughter, “This is _my_ house, doll!”

A pause, as the realization washes over you when he presses a button on his phone and the garage opens smoothly, and your hand on his bicep relents only to smack him there as you huff, “You had me all scared for _nothing_?”

“You shoulda’ seen your face,” he was doing his best to quiet his laughter, but it still rumbled through him in low chuckles as he pulls into the garage. He snorts as he repeats your accusation, “‘Broke their kneecaps.’ _Fucking hilarious.”_

“Well, what did you do with them, then, _oh, merciful one_?” you snap, too bristly with your own embarrassment at being had to reign in your annoyance, but it doesn’t seem to phase him, as he slips the gear into park and the garage lights snap on around you. He leans over the middle console, invading your space as your glare becomes increasingly weary when his arm reaches across you to lay on the other side of the door, breath ghosting over your lips.

“Oh, I killed them,” it rolls from his tongue with such a flat seriousness that it sends a shiver up your spine, up until his teeth cut in another teasing grin along his lips and you realize he’s still pulling your chain.

You go to push at his chest, gasping out a scandalized, “Bucky, that’s not funny—” but any continuance of the tongue-lashing is silenced with the press of his lips against yours. It startles you, a squeak muffled against his tongue, as he parts your lips and leans into you, pushing you back into the leather with the weight of his presence.

It’s truly pathetic, how your fight leaves you so quickly. How the embodiment of his lust, laid bare in the heated manner in which he kissed you, is enough to make you feel so out of your depth that you can barely figure where you place your hands, absentmindedly balling your fists into the cotton of his shirt for lack of an answer. He tastes as you remember, but the smoke doesn’t cling to his scent in the way it had before. His cologne is at the forefront of your mind, spicy and warm in a deceiving lure to draw you closer, and mixed with the slight twinge of the alcohol on his breath. A groan leaves him, when you hesitantly begin to kiss him back, far more unsure than his commanding press at your lips would suggest of himself.

And he had you right where he wanted you.

He pulls back, lips parted slightly, as you suck your bottom lip into your mouth involuntarily and swallow back under the weight of his stare, “Third lesson,” he murmurs softly, voice so low and laced in the thrumming electricity of tension crackling between you, “they can’t repay you, if they’re dead.”

“S-So they’re not…” you trail off, smothering the jarring urge to kiss him again as it creeps into the back of your mind. _That’s so fucked up._

Bucky smiles, fingers coming to your jaw to trace his thumb down your bottom lip, catching your chin as he teasingly quotes, “I made them an offer they couldn’t refuse.”

You decide to be satisfied with that, rather than have him reveal the intimate details of whatever offer he had made them— if he even would tell you to begin with, which you doubted. He was too smart for that; outright incrimination wasn’t his style.

And any singular remainder of the idea of questioning him further evaporates when he drags his lips along yours once more, his distraction too great for you to think past the flush in your bones— the flip in your stomach. The slight nausea that comes with the realization that he was going to fuck you again, tonight. It’s horrible, how you can’t decide if you’re reluctant or excited at the possibility.

_God forgive you, you were such a fucking mess._

When your hands slip up his chest, smoothing gently along the curve of his shoulders, broad and expansive in their pathway towards his neck, he leans off of you to press the door open, voice rasping his order, and you know you’ll do it, “Get out.”

The distance from the car to the garage entrance to his home is lost to you in the quick strides you leave in your efforts to keep his pace, and any immediate observation of the inside of his home is left at the glaring and shocking realization of his sleek, white walls before he sees fit to press you against them. It’s vast, you had managed to notice, in the beat that your eyes had been allowed to glance along its vaulted ceilings and hardwood floors, before he had caged you in between the lengthy spanse of him and the hard wall he maneuvered you into. His lips descended on yours, eager hands pulling at the ribboned straps lacing the back of your dress, until you feel it slip on your skin, slacking to his efforts.

His lips are determined, precise, as he slurs the edge of your kiss to the side of your mouth, down your jaw, the nudging press of his nose encouraging you to bare your throat, where he lays claim with his mouth and tongue. A gasp slips from you, reeling in the wake of how undone he’s got you, and heated when he hikes you up the wall just enough by the wind of his arm around your waist so that he no longer needs to bend, thigh slotting between your knees in the dual purpose of support and torture, because you drag along it as you slip down the wall with gravity ever so slightly, clenching your thighs around his firm one.

“ _Buck_ ,” you murmur with the breathless inability to complete the two syllables of his name, feeling as if your cheeks were on fire, because, despite him having had you once before, you can’t get used to the feeling of him against you the way he is right now. Touching you, as intimately as you had ever been before.

Lidded eyes cast upwards, you catch sight of a chandelier, in the room opposite the direct hallway where he had you pressed alongside his alarm box. Open concept— the beautiful expanse of the room almost desolate in how empty it felt, urban furniture decorating the space that seemed nearly untouched. All of this, was his?

It was as equally amazing, as it was tragic.

“See?” he snaps you out of it, breath fanning along the shell of your ear as he grabs large handfuls of your thighs, grinding you along his thigh and sending arousal swirling within you, “You’re starting to enjoy it again, doll.”

A hand on the side of his face, beard softer than you remembered under your palm, has him leaning back, hooded gaze focused on the words as you speak them, “Show me your bedroom, Bucky.”

It sounds foreign— like someone else is saying them, rather than you— because _you can’t be asking him to bed you again with a semblance of sincerity, can you?_ No, he was a horrible— monstrous sort of man, and you couldn’t possibly want him, even a little bit.

You were simply playing his game, for all it’s worth.

_Right?_

It’s what you tell yourself when he kisses you again, a hunger behind it that curls your toes, and breathes heavily against your lips, the lie at them nearly as sweet as he tasted, “Whatever you want, doll.”

His fingers find yours in a grip that’s nearly startling with the gentleness there, but his urging tug as he draws you further into his home has an urgent bite to it that can only be met with the pace you set along the angular positioning of the floorboards beneath you. The clip of his boots is heavier than your own footsteps as he leads you up a flight of stairs— which you bitterly notice reside alongside an elevator. _How big was this place?_

 _Too big for one person,_ that much you had figured the moment you set foot into it.

His room resides on the second floor, or third, depending if you counted the basement or not, and down a short hallway that ended in him nearly dragging you into his arms once within it. No time to scrutinize it while he’s walking you backwards into his domain, and if it weren’t for the hands at your hips, you would have lost your footing.

The dress clinging loosely to your arms is finally dispelled with a tug of his fingers, sending it to pool around your ankles as your knees hit the edge of something soft— a bed, you realize, as your heart pounds with the realization. It’s foolish— you _know_ what’s happening, some part of you is worryingly _okay_ with what is happening, but your heart leaps with a sharp nervousness all the same.

“S-Slow down, Bucky,” your voice shakes around his name, as he urges you down onto the bed, your heels pushing you up it, all the while he leans over you, registering your words with a predatory glint to his eyes.

“Don’t try to hit the brakes on me, now, doll,” you don’t know why you thought he would treat you any differently, because his eyes are just as mean as before as he inches up your body and tugs at your bra, “Slow isn’t really my pace— and your cherry’s already popped.” It’s so crass, that you feel yourself sink into the duvet— as white as the walls, you realize— and watch as he revels in your embarrassment, his long fingers slipping down the straps of your bra, “Don’t be shy— I think we know each other pretty well, by now.” His knees dip his weight along the bed, as he lowers himself to brush his lips slowly just above your navel, and you jolt just a bit at the touch, “Or, do you need me to remind you just how well we know each other?”

His hands smooth up your thighs as slowly as he moves down your body, offering open-mouthed kisses in his wake, until you have to shut your eyes in an attempt to get the vision of him out of your head, but it’s still there. He’s still there— squeezing where your thigh met your hip before scooping his hands along the line of your panties, teeth grazing just above the top of them.

“I’m waiting for an answer, doll,” the groove of his voice is just as mean as the taunt he’d given, because he knows that he’ll get what he wants from you regardless. You should be grateful he’s in a giving mood, really, but you’re too lost wrestling with the aching want for him to actually do it that you’re at a loss for words.

He grows impatient, and his fingers take the barrier and your choice down with them, something bordering on a sigh and a whimper leaving you at the feeling of exposure as he opens you up for him. You think he’ll touch you with his fingers, like he did yesterday, get you ready for him, like he had before.

Your eyes snap open when his hot breath fans along the curve of your innermost thigh, lips kissing far too close to your pussy for comfort— because you either wanted him _closer_ , or not there at all.

“Bucky, y-you _can’t_ —!” the surprise in your voice cuts off in a startled whine when he lays his tongue along the sensitive nub of your clit, and when you arch in an attempt to squirm out from underneath him, his grip at your thighs turns bruising. Wrapped around them were the tight expanse of his arms, metal fingers splayed along your stomach as his other squeezed your hip encouragingly.

It was mortifying, intimidatingly wonderful, having him there— kissing you there— in a way that burned you up all the way down to your toes. You didn’t know whether to be humiliated or ecstatic, as the pleasure washed over you in waves directed from his tongue as he curls his lips along your clit and _sucks_.

Any debate is over the moment a hopeless moan rips from your throat, and you find yourself gripping into the duvet in an attempt to not smack him away. It was too much, all at once, and he hadn’t even warned you, first—

The fingers along your stomach creep lower, until he can lay the pads of his fingertips along your clit, allowing his tongue to dip lower, through the glistening folds and deeper. It’s so foreign that you buck against him involuntarily, and his upper arms tighten on your thighs to keep you still.

“No one ever eat you out before, doll?” he relents just enough to throw his ridicule up at you, “You really were a little virgin in every way, huh?”

 _Asshole, asshole, asshole—_ scrambles in your brain, but your only verbal response is a slight whine as he resumes his delicious torture. Any venom on your tongue is extinguished with the simple press of his tongue within you, and the roll of his fingers at your clit. He’s precise, in the way he works you over, and if he had any care for the way your wetness glistened along the black coldness of his prosthesis, he didn’t show it.

You’re blinking back tears, as your back arches off the bed and you writhe, unable to get from beneath the intense pressure he was working within you— not for lack of trying. You’re barely recognizable, with his name falling from your mouth, along with other, more complacent forms of begging, not entirely sure if you were calling upon a deity or the man above you. And your thighs were pressed along his ears, but his only response was the groan he lays deep into your cunt as he licks his own want there. Glancing up at you through the spanse of his lashes, it’s a sight so erotic that you can barely hang on longer than the press of his middle finger at your clit, and the flick of his tongue along your entrance.

Your thighs shake as you cum, bursting and crackling through you with all the violence of thunder and all the destruction of lightning. Fabric twists in your fists, and you barely realize you’ve called his name in the throes of it, your legs still tight around his head until he pries himself from you to slip, cocky and at a major clothing advantage, up your form.

Desire drips in his tone, as he drapes himself over you, shuddering in the aftermath and the way your nipples press through your bra to graze at the cut of his dinner jacket, “I told you it wasn’t all bad— you’re enjoying yourself now, aren’t you, doll?” His hand grips your jaw, flesh-and-blood thumb and forefinger along the complete spanse of it, before he swipes his thumb along your bottom lip, whispering, “Answer me.”

 _“No,”_ you aren’t quite sure if that’s the answer to his question, or the response to his request for an answer in itself, but you get your own answer at the nagging— almost, begging— sound of it, for him not to press you further, into admitting to him that you liked this.

“Oh, doll,” he sighs, thumb at the corner of your mouth, enjoying the war raging in your eyes, “you’re such a bad liar.”

He leans back, but the heat of his gaze is just as suffocating as his presence had been. It’s a daze, watching him strip himself of his jacket, the crew-neck beneath serving just as much purpose as he tugs it over his head and off the end of his bed. The dark dusting of hair along his chest guides your eyes down, and you find yourself appreciating him in a way that had not been so easy yesterday, when you were too caught up in your head and the worry of your first time to even focus on much else. Tonight, though, as he tugs his belt from the loops of his dark jeans and slides them over his hips, you _watch_ him.

“Take your bra off,” he growls, breaking your gaze, “before I rip it off of you.”

The press of your skull back and the arch of your shoulders leaves enough room for your hands to slip beneath your back, clasp falling from its purchase methodically with the practice that comes from years of it, and you strip yourself bare just as he parts your knees to situate himself once more between them.

Bare skin meets the palm of your hand as you find his arm beneath it, gripping tightly when he drags the head of his cock through your folds, “Remember what I said? Tell me what you want, baby. Tell me what you want, and I’ll give it to you.”

He’s so awful, that he’s going to force you to say it.

But you can barely think, with the hit of the head of his length as he grinds through your folds— to harsh, it left you breathless, worked you over with just the repetitive friction of it, that words have completely escaped you.

“If you don’t tell me, I’ll make you work harder for it,” you hear him— he’s so much better put together than you— but for the life of you, you can barely think what you want to say, let alone expel it from your lips. His hands slip around your waist, as he huffs at your lips when he catches at your entrance, _so close_ to actually pressing within you, but a shift of his hips has him sparking fire at your clit once more, “Maybe you like the hard way, huh?”

You have the sense to question the mischief in his eyes, “W-Wha—?”

And he’s so strong, jarringly so, that he makes it look easy as he shifts his hips and all but manhandles you into the roll of them, until your world tilts left and you’re left tumbling down into the expanse of his chest, as you sit flush against the length of him. A moan crumbles in your voice, as you try to push yourself up and off of him, but his grip around your hips has slipped to wrap around your back, forearm hard and solid, keeping you flush as he plants his feet on the duvet by the heels and pistons his hip until the head of him is just barely splitting you open.

A sweat breaks on your brow as you find your head collapses into his shoulder, the broken sound in your throat something akin to a sob around his name, “Bucky— _fuck—”_

Slow maybe wasn’t his pace, but it was absolutely _destroying_ you.

Just as you feel the slight sting of his delightful stretch, he relents, hips stilling and leaving a desperate sound crawling up the back of your throat, “Don’t do that— don’t stop—”

He’s breathless, lips pink and bruised from your own, but despite his own need, he will not relent to you, “Tell me what you want me to do— you gotta’ tell me—” Will he really draw this out, if you refuse? You can hardly believe he can stand to do it.

He _will_ , and he _does_.

Your hands flat on his chest, the squirm of your hips— nothing can set you free from the destructive torture he leaves in his wake, and, at a point you have to whisper— have to beg him, and, you can’t deny it’s the truth as it falls from your lips.

“I want you— Bucky, please— _I want you inside me—_ ” it’s as much an admission of guilt as it is a carnal plea, and the shiver that it sends through him— you can’t convince yourself it isn’t from the way it sounds so broken on your tongue, as you murmur it into his ear.

“That wasn’t so hard to admit, was it?” but his hold on you doesn’t ease— as tight as ever, keeping your body pressed tight up against his own, as his head splits you open again. This time, though, he plows ever onward, and the same ache from the night before burns a little brighter than before, yet duller than when he had been your first. Your hands slip along his chest, only able to catch themselves in the dark tresses of his hair as you whimper and cry your way through it— through the heart-quickening stretch and drag of it, as he tilts you closer to oblivion. He groans, deep and full in his chest, and can’t help himself from snapping his hips, quick, the rest of the way into you in a way that has you hiking up his chest despite the hold he had on you.

You can feel every breath, every moan in the close press of his chest to yours, and each sharp thrust sends your body dragging along his until you can barely think straight. He hits you deep, and it nearly hurts, as he beats his bruising pace into you while keeping you so close that you can barely move to meet his own thrusts, let alone _breathe_.

His grip only relents as you lay a kiss along his chest, so desperate to quell your moans with something that you occupy your tongue there, and his pace falters. His grip around your waist goes slack as he reaches for your hair, instead, pulling you from your marking of his skin to drag your lips to meet his own.

No matter how bad he was, you had to admit, he was good at _this_.

You mewl into his lips, watching him watch you through drooped eyes and a dilated stare that has you clenching tight around him and sends him slamming up into you as his tongue presses into your hard palate.

It’s husky at your lips, drowned in his want as he growls, “Do that again— _fuck_ , do it again, doll.”

So you do, grinding down against him with the small leverage his looser grip had allowed you, and clenching hard as the hard length of him pushed deep through the brunt of it, leaving your breathless at the feeling and a little light-headed. It was good, so good, and the planting of your hands at his chest aid in your achieving it again— in getting him to hit somewhere that had your whole body trembling with how close you were to your release.

And his mouth wasn’t helping you any.

_Yeah, doll, just like that. You look good when you ride me, baby. Fuck— so fucking good. You’re my fucking good little girl, aren’t you? You take it like you were made for it. Yeah, you like it more than you thought you would, don’t you?_

They’re so mind-numbingly dirty, the words falling from his tongue, that the waves of embarrassment meet the waves of your arousal in equal strides. It makes you want him more— if that were possible, as you mindlessly meet each snap of his lips with your own settlement into his lap until the slap of flesh against flesh is nearly as lewd as the way he’s talking to you.

His fingers at the nape of your neck, wound in your hair is unwavering, up until your pace falters with the shaky brush of his metal thumb at the cleft of your clit, right above where he had parted you with himself. Bucky finds his grip at the curve of your throat, keeping you from collapsing entirely upon him as you lose yourself in the feeling, your hands flying from his chest to his forearm in an attempt to keep your balance atop him.

“You gonna’ cum? You close?” his voice breaks around a groan as he feels your walls clench down around him once more, “ _Please_ , tell me you’re close, doll—”

A hasty nod of your head and a moan of his name is all the answer he gets, because he cuts your windpipe off entirely when he snaps his hips up to yours and squeezes your throat for an instant. The panic of being unable to breathe, mixed with the pleasure vibrating up your spine with each hit of his hips, each fumbling flick of his fingers against your clit, it’s all too much, and suddenly you’re far closer than you had thought possible before. Riding the edge of your climax for the hot second it takes for you to wrench oxygen back to your lungs with the weight of his hand still along the curve of your neck, until it _erupts_.

You’re reeling, barely coherent as it splits you open from the inside out, flays you bare and raw atop him and wrings itself from you in the pulsing waves of your heartbeat. You hear him, distantly, a choked sound and wide eyes accompanying his sudden realization of your orgasm as it washes over him as much as it did you, your walls spasming and impossibly tight around him as he struggles to keep a quick pace with the force of it. He’s cursing, you think in the back of your mind, but you can barely breathe, and you don’t know if it’s because his grip has tightened again, or because the pleasure hitting you square in the chest has claimed the cavernous spaces that had once been left for air.

You’re barely on your comedown, when he drops his hips and slips from you with a throaty gasp, and a ferocity to the biting way he drags your whole body down by your neck to clash his lips against yours. Spilling hot and sticky along the curve of your thigh and dribbling along his own abdomen. Your hands pressed into the plush comforter beneath his head as you fold atop him like a paper crane, but with none of the elegance and all of the fragility.

His lips, the _way_ he kisses you, in the immediate aftermath almost makes you feel filthier than the act itself, because it’s all tongue and heated breaths, soft moans and equally as soft confessions. But even the guilt at how much you’ve enjoyed it doesn’t make you slip off his chest when you finally catch your breath and he’s panting his own.

In the dim lighting of the room, you finally get a good, up-close look at the metal of his arm, and the scars where his body had sewed itself into it. It’s made of something more substantial than iron or steel, but you can’t be sure what, and you absentmindedly draw your fingers along the golden crevices that adorned it. It was flashy and beautiful, in a way that suggested its owner wished to display it, but if that were the case, then why did he hide it beneath long sleeves and coats?

You’re lost in thought, as your thumb traces the cool metal, and you feel him stiffen beneath you a bit as he realizes the focus of your attention upon fully catching his breath.

“What’s it made out of?” you wonder aloud, so soft that he could easily write your question off at having been directed to yourself, rather than him, because you certainly weren’t about to repeat it in the silence that permeates between you.

But he parts his lips, and humors you, just this once, “Vibranium.”

“Vibranium,” you hum, tasting the word on your tongue, and wondering where you’ve heard that word before. In the sluggish lull of your post-orgasm brain, you can’t quite place it, but you sigh, resting your chin along his chest, far more relaxed than you had been all night, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything made of Vibranium before.”

The flesh of his hand finds your hip, “You probably haven’t. It’s rare— the only substantial quantities of it are found in Wakandan mines, over in Africa.”

“Hmm,” you hum, content enough with his answer and caring little for whatever storied way he had come to possess an arm made from such a rare thing. Instead, your mind pulls to something that hits closer to home, “What’s my debt looking like, now?”

“Gettin’ there,” he breathes deep beneath you, and you almost have the energy to be mad at him. Almost.

“I’m gonna kill Donnie myself, if I ever see him again, you know,” you sigh against the slow rise and fall of his chest, brow furrowing. Now, _there_ was a man you could openly hate.

“What’s the story there?” Bucky wonders, “He had to do something to make you hate him like you do— you’re blood. That isn’t an easy bond to break.”

“It is when Donnie’s your brother,” you whine, burying your nose into him and regretting having brought him up at all; you highly doubted Bucky would let it go.

He doesn’t, and in the small glance you spare up at him, you can almost fool yourself into thinking that he actually cares for the reason past whatever information he could possibly gain from it, “What’d he do to you, doll?” He watches you chew your lip, debating whether or not to comply, but the slight curve to his lips and tease in his voice solidifies the answer for you, “Show me yours, I’ll show you mine?”

“I already know what he did to you, Bucky,” you frown, a raise of your brow meeting his grin, “ _intimately_.”

“Okay, how about this, I’ll let you ask me one question, and I have to give you a straight answer. If I can’t, you get to ask me another one,” he looks so hopeful, so pleasant, that it catches you entirely off-guard, and maybe that’s why you accept so easily, “How’s that sound?”

“Fine,” you relent, leaning up to brush your hair out of your face before you sigh around the start of your story, “I’m guessing Donnie told you enough about our childhood already?”

“Some of it, but he never was too descriptive. Just that he had a sister, parents, they were in the life, like him, in some way or another. You, though? He never did talk much about you,” Bucky’s fingers drag up your hip, slipping along the bare edges of your ribcage and sending a shiver through your body. “Didn’t expect Donnie’s little sister to come knockin’ at my door, that’s for sure— and that proposition of yours? I’ll be honest, I couldn’t just pass it up.” His eyes darken a bit, and his voice grows softer, but not gentler, a rasping edge to it that stirs something between discomfort and arousal within your very soul, “Not when you look like you do.”

Your breath is shaky, as you try not to derail the conversation, “ _Okay_ , so, yeah, we grew up in Brooklyn, and, when we were kids, it wasn’t all bad blood between us. He’s a couple years older, you know, so I practically worshiped the ground he walked on in those days. Followed him around like the annoying little sister I probably was, because if there was one thing I wanted, more than anything, back then, it was to be like Donnie.”

The nostalgia that washes over you is laced with a bitterness, “When I was about fourteen, he was gonna’ finally let me tag along on something— help him out, you know? And the gang he was running with at the time was gonna’ let me in, if I just did this little job, which was an easier initiation than it was for most girls— all because I was Donnie’s little sister, and he had a pretty big say-so in the gang.” You rest your chin on your hands, cupped over his chest as you look at him, and find his raise of a brow your cue to continue, “It was supposed to be a simple B-and-E, and I was gonna’ be the getaway driver.”

“A fourteen year old, as the getaway driver?” Bucky chuckles.

“Yeah, I never said they were smart,” you huff, “so, anyway, they got me in this old beat-up Honda with stolen plates, and I thought I was practically Queen of the world, driving them to it, up until the cops showed— the idiots didn’t even think about there being a silent alarm, and we were all screwed from the start of it.” A venom on your tongue as you bite, “Well, I was, at least, because Donnie and his boys took off in the alleyway and, before I knew it, I had an officer knocking on my window with the barrel of his gun. Donnie didn’t even try to warn me, or come get me, and I was so _stupid_ —” you grit your teeth, “that I even thought there was an excuse for it, and kept my mouth shut. Took the misdemeanor charge as a juvie, because it was my first offense, and he never even bailed me out. Parents thought it served me right for getting caught, so they didn’t either.”

“Damn.”

“Yeah, the nicest person out of the whole ordeal was the judge— and I don’t know if it was just because she could see just how scared I was, but she only gave me half the community service and probation I coulda’ got for it,” a deep breath through your nose calms you of the emotions bubbling in your throat, even after all these years. “I told myself right then and there that it was the last time I went to jail for someone who never had my back in the first place— and it was the wake-up call I needed when it came to Donnie.”

“Scared straight, huh?” Bucky grins down at you, like the idea is laughable in itself.

“I just figured what was the point in ruining my life for someone who couldn’t care less about me?”

A breath, before he sighs, “Loyalty’s a hard thing to find in some people.”

The soft lull of pillow-talk urges you onward, holding him to his word, “Alright, you heard my sob story, so what about yours?”

“That’s your question?” he chuckles, but it’s more nervous than you’ve ever heard him.

“Yeah, I want to know how you got wrapped up in all of this.”

He tears his eyes from yours to stare at the ceiling, jaw clenching as he frowns, and you wonder if he’ll even keep his side of the bargain, now, but if there was one thing James Barnes was always good for, it was his promises.

“No one’s ever asked me that before.”

“Really?” you can’t help the disbelief as it laces your voice, skeptical in the truth of it. “Would have thought that more people would want to confirm if the rumors were true or not.”

“Rumors?” he finally looks down at you.

“Uh, _yeah_ ,” you splay your hands along his chest and push up just a little, to get your point across as you feel his hand slip back down to your hip, “you can’t go around with a nickname like _The Winter Soldier_ and not have a few rumors sprout up about you.”

His laugh is low as it slips between the two of you, and you feel it in the curve of his stomach along your own, “Guess no one’s ever had the guts to ask me.”

“I can’t believe _that_ ,” a furious flush heats your face as you tack on, “maybe the other women you’ve been with were just a little too… preoccupied to care.”

“Oh, doll,” his grin erupts into something large, as he cuts the endearment on his teeth, “is that your way of saying I’m good in the sack?”

“Shut up,” you shouldn’t have said anything at all. _Fuck this game,_ you were about to let him off the hook entirely, at this rate—

But his head falls back to the duvet, and his chuckles at having effectively gotten his rise out of you die down when he says, “My mom died when I was young, and I never really knew my dad. It’s like, he’s there, in the back of my mind in some of the early memories, but I can’t quite make him out, not really. Not in a way that isn’t entirely pieced together with the pictures she kept.”

_Oh, shit… you were regretting this, now._

But he plows on, a bit of a haste to his story, in order to breeze past it, “So I wound up in Foster Care, which, was a prison sentence in it’s own right. They give kids fucking garbage bags, you know, to carry your stuff in? Just to remind you you’re trash.” His jaw clenches, and you feel his grip tighten along your hip, as his breathing picks up with his words beneath you, “And the foster families I was with, they were the worst. Just a walking check, is all they saw us as, too many kids in a home at a time, and you were _fucking lucky_ if that was the worst of it.”

Bucky sighs, and you see him relax a little with the force of it, “Fuck, I was lucky to have Steve. He was a sick kid, back then. Allergies like you wouldn’t believe, asthma, you name it, he just about had it or had had it— grew out of a lot of it after we got older, thank God, ‘cause I’m pretty sure his own mother wasn’t sure if he was gonna’ live past thirty, at one point.”

“But I’m getting off track— I spent most of my time at his place. He was the one constant, up until I hit seventeen and signed up for the army, the first chance I got, just to get out of the foster system. I wouldn’t have survived another year in that house, I swear.” There’s a ghost in his eyes, in the way he says it, and you don’t dare to delve further than the small glimpse he gives you of it. The remnant, in his eyes.

“Steve joined me, not long after, and, he was even better at it than I was. He was a Captain, I was a Sergeant. It’s funny to think, legitimately, he was in charge of me,” Bucky’s lips tilt upwards at the memory, before they settle into a more despondent flicker of a smile, “but you can’t fight in the Delta Force forever, and when I lost my arm, that was it for me. Purple heart, and you’re done for. A veteran— knocked back down to civilian status.”

“How’s a decorated Sergeant…?” you trail off, catching yourself before you complete the thought, but he does for you.

“Become me?” he eyes you, dark in a way that was all ice instead of the fire he had looked at you with before, and the shiver that slips down your spine isn’t one of arousal, but a sliver of fear, “What? Like that Purple Heart’s so great?” He scoffs, “It may as well be a consolation prize. You can’t pay your bills with a Purple Heart— you’re missing an arm, so you can’t even work, not until you get yourself back together again. The V.A. sure as hell isn’t gonna’ pay for a good enough prosthetic.” His annoyance bubbles over despite the way your hands smooth up his chest, gentle in your attempt to quell the anger there, sarcasm dripping from his tongue, “And, you only lost one arm, so you don’t qualify for disability. _Guess that I shoulda’ made sure the explosion took off my fuckin’ foot, too.”_

And you let him feel it, sitting in the swirling turmoil that was his anger as it swelled and dipped in his chest, you just listen. It was all you felt you really _could_ do, too worried a verbal acknowledgement may cause him to realize he’s said too much already. Let you in, a little too far, to where you can see the hint of the man he was, beneath all the bravado and rough exterior.

“Turns out, a war vet with missing pieces is still worth more to some people than the Government, ‘cause the Government wasn’t who gave me my arm back, and? Any price I was gonna’ have to pay for it, I figured I’d already paid twice-over to my country— so _why not_ use my skill-set to get what I needed, for once?” the look in his eyes is distant and swirling with an underlying resentment, and the worst part of it is that you can’t _really_ blame him for feeling this way. At the end of all of it, when the silence creeps back in-between you, he seems to snap out of whatever had overcome him, and looks almost regretful that he’d said so much, to someone he barely knew.

All you can do is breathe hard, a long sigh that expresses the weight of it in the gust of air you expel from your lips, “That’s…” It trails off, hanging in the air with all the explanation you need to give, and you hope he can feel it. How uncertain you were, of what you were supposed to feel after he’d told you the things he had— how conflicted you were, when it came to him.

“You don’t have to do this,” he says, cutting through you like butter, walls up and cold. “You don’t have to stay. You can leave, now.”

You’re too soft for your own good, because the words pull at your chest, as you lean back down over him and force his eyes to catch your own, with the way your hair shades your face. Lips brushing, against his, as you murmur softly in the sweltering privacy between you.

“Alright.”

But you weren’t leaving, despite your better judgement— no regard for the small part of you that screams for you to take the opportunity to run. Not a chance.

Maybe that’s why, you get what you deserve.


	3. The King of Spades

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Summary: Navigating this new world in which you’ve found yourself is going to be harder than you thought, when an old friend brings warning of newer troubles on the horizon. Reaching out for help is easier said than done, when you aren’t sure where your loyalties lie, but Bucky is more than happy to make up your mind for you.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Warnings: NSFW; dark!fic; dubcon themes; mobster/mafia AU; mentions of blood, guns, violence, murder, drugs, gambling, etc.; there’s some angst; stalker-esque behavior on Bucky’s part ngl; oral sex, facefucking, minor edging; IEDs; minor character injury; potential cringe; Russian that I used google translate for (I’m sorry in advance)
> 
> A/N: Heed the warnings, y’all. The only thing I’m sorry for in this fic is that this part took so long to come out!! I hope you enjoy it, despite it being a bit heavier than the two parts before. After all, things gotta’ get worse before they can get better, and all that 😈 ((Special thanks to my bestie Bix for listening to every one of my concerns about this part and working me thru them even tho they were out of context lol))

[ ](https://thranduilsperkybutt.tumblr.com/image/630879692824674304)

##  _**Lamb Among Wolves ♠️ Part III ; The King of Spades** _

Photo sources: [1](https://megmeg-chan.tumblr.com/post/617543746829074432/stevenrogered-sebastian-stan-in-endings) | [2](https://megmeg-chan.tumblr.com/post/618553989161730048) | [3](https://megmeg-chan.tumblr.com/post/190930250652) | [4](https://megmeg-chan.tumblr.com/post/625430389105786880/saralahnce-sassy-matt) | [5](https://yourjamesbuckybarnes.tumblr.com/post/625432108772589568/hardfeelingslove-touch-me-feel-me) | [6](https://yourjamesbuckybarnes.tumblr.com/post/625431663022882816) | [7](https://yourjamesbuckybarnes.tumblr.com/post/625431270298681344) | [8](https://yourjamesbuckybarnes.tumblr.com/post/190928159366)

* * *

With the ghost of a memory, somewhere on the outer edges of your mind, comes the vague remembrance of a dream. Barely out of reach, so close that it seems as if you could only stretch far enough with your fingertips, you could snatch its detail back into focus.

That’s how you feel, when you wake up in his bed. Hair a mess, you push up from the heavy duvet in the white midday sunlight that filters through the curtains of the rectangular townhouse windows. Your head feels heavy. Drugged by the exhaustion and the ache in your bones, as whatever dream you were in the midst of chasing down escapes you entirely, and you forget what it had told of in the first place.

A yawn at your lips, you glance about the room. As the haze of sleep clears like fog from your mind, you remember where you are, and who is missing from the space alongside you. The bed is cold; you don’t know if you’re disappointed or relieved by the fact that he’s not there.

You _should_ be relieved.

“ _Fuck_ ,” you groan when you stretch, expletive on your tongue sounding hoarse in your throat, so you clear it. Last night had been… confusing, to say the least. You try your best not to play it back in your head, but the projector is broken, and the grainy film of the memory comes without your consent, snagging on the pieces of yourself that you gave, possibly more freely than you should have, to someone like him. Regret is something that gets lost in the late hours of the night, only to find its way home when morning comes.

A particularly loud bird outside the window snaps you from dwelling further on the mistake of staying the night before, and when you push yourself from the bed you find your legs need a moment to remember their purpose. Weak and shaky until your third step, you expect your clothes to be scattered along the floor just as you’d left them, but instead you’re shocked to find your undergarments set neatly along a dark gray armchair by the window, and your dress laid along the back of it. It was in vain— the thing had already wrinkled, but you wonder if the act is more from army meticulousness or genuine thoughtfulness.

As you dress, you take the moment to get a better look at Barnes’ bedroom than you had the night before. The bare bones of it, the color scheme, the furniture, was all just as cold as the glimpse of the rest of his home that you’d managed to catch on your way up here. Beautifully devoid of color, whites, blacks, and grays mingle with the wood to shade the room in a modernistic setup that is impersonal enough to suggest he hadn’t bothered designing his own home, but rather paid someone else to do it.

That’s why it’s so out of place, on the far wall of the room. Your eye is drawn to the error of it. Floor to ceiling bookshelves that ran along the wall and stopped only for the door leading to the en suite, filled with everything from Hawking to Tolstoy. Worn, cracked soft-covers sat alongside elegant hardbacks, in a way that suggested their presence wasn’t merely for the well-read illusionism they could offer otherwise.

Continuing your glancing sweep of the room, a photograph atop his dresser catches your eye as you fumble with the dress’ back, urging you to step closer for a better look.

The version of Bucky who smiles back at you is younger than he is now, dressed in army garb, and holding tight to a happier vision of Steve Rogers than you’d ever had the pleasure to meet. Sam’s hand is a blur in a dismissive wave, caught somewhere between words as a smile tugs around his parted lips, like he’s chastising whoever took the photo for snapping the candid of them in the middle of the mess hall. The depiction is warm, playful, and you find yourself growing a soft smile at the glimpse into it, but another scan of the room has you wondering why this is the only photo he’s chosen to put on display.

_But it isn’t on display, really, is it?_ Not _here_ , in the privacy of this bedroom where only he and those he chose to allow within it would have a chance to see it. No, this was something exclusively _his_ , and the realization of that makes you feel like a voyeur, gawking.

Escaping into the large en suite, you refuse to pry further, because _you shouldn’t even care to._ Curiosity is what got Pandora in trouble, after all, and you figured yourself smart enough to learn by example.

Washing the feeling away with the water on your face, you find yourself almost irritated at the size of his bathroom, and no longer surprised by the coldness of it. Attempting to make yourself look as presentable as possible, you rake fingers along the mess of your hair, and try smoothing down the dress until the wrinkles are nearly as unnoticeable as the slight anxiety simmering in your veins at the thought of having to seek him out in this vacant manor.

The blemishing love-bites evidencing his touch, however, are not so easily hidden with the cut of your dress, feeling suddenly more revealing than the night before. You tear yourself from the reflection in the mirror, her eyes too knowing for your liking, to instead return to the bedroom and collect what few things you had with you in order to make your way back down the staircase Barnes had led you up the night before.

The low murmur of voices becomes audible the deeper you descend towards the first floor, and by the time you’re halfway down the staircase, pieces of a tense conversation are only slightly muffled in your ears.

“My predecessor may have gone about it all wrong, but in some ways, he had the right idea. Expansion— it’s the future, but working together is what will keep us in business. When are you gonna’ accept that you’re not the only game in town anymore?”

“All the gangs in Harlem answer to me, and as far as Diamondback is concerned, I’m the _only_ game on that side of the East River that matters.”

“And what about _this_ side of the water, pal? Oh, that’s right, Brooklyn’s not yours. It’s _mine_ , but that’s been settled.”

“I don’t care what kind of joint-custody deal you’ve got goin’ on over here, _you_ don’t do business with Diamondback without going through me.”

“Would you rather I do business with the Wakandans again, Stokes? They’re becoming some of your biggest competitors, but, here I figured I’d help another member of the Commission, you know, out of the _kindness of my fuckin’ heart._ Keep everything in-house, especially since I’ve heard your shipments keep getting seized by that new task-force, but if you think for one second that I’d do business through a middleman without vetting the source of the product myself, you’re outta’ your fuckin’ mind—”

“I’m not your _fuckin_ ’ middleman, Barnes! And I’m not your bitch, either! Watch the way you’re talkin’ to me, ‘cause _Commission or not,_ if you start moving that product without paying my consultation fee, I’ll bring more hell down on you than ol’ Fortunato got when he started moving in on the Ruh—”

As you reach the bottom step, you catch the eye of a tall, stocky man standing in the archway leading into the living room, who interrupts whatever was being argued with a punctuating, _“Boss.”_

“ _What, Sugar?”_ snaps sharply from beside him, and as you move further into the line of sight, it takes all the effort you have left not to show an ounce of the rising fear shooting up your spine at the sight of Cornell Stokes himself, sitting on an armchair in Bucky’s living room. He points a slender finger in your direction, frown etching deeper into his brow, “Who the fuck is she?”

Bucky glances over his shoulder and the back of the love-seat to face you, features dismissive but otherwise unreadable as, for a split second, his eyes catch your own. With a nod at Sam, who you notice is sitting alongside Steve on the couch, Bucky breaks the momentary silence.

“Nobody important— don’t worry about her.”

Your mouth is too dry to say anything, and you don’t really know if you should, considering the heated glare that Stokes seems to be trying to burn into Bucky. Exacerbated by the silence following your unexpected interruption, the tension only grows thicker, until it’s nearly suffocating. You had heard enough to tell that whatever they were discussing, was something you probably shouldn’t know too much about, but—

Sam has you by the elbow, breaking you from your own effort at burning a hole in the back of Bucky’s head with his gentle grip, firm like he’d grabbed that woman last night, but he wasn’t smiling for the show of it this time. No-one here required entertainment or flourish. No, this is business.

His lips are a tight line, but his eyes are softer as he guides you away from the living room, towards the garage, “I’ll take you home,” and you don’t know why it makes you feel discarded to be hurried away like this, but it does.

_You shouldn’t care,_ you remind yourself, but even the awareness doesn’t help.

The fact that the man escorting you to his car already knows of the nature of your arrangement with Barnes, doesn’t make the walk to it any less shameful. The embarrassment is burning in your cheeks, turning your stomach and keeping you quiet as you enter the passenger side.

But none of that is enough to quench the growing terror at the idea that you’ve heard something you weren’t supposed to hear.

“Nice dress, by the way,” there’s an effort to break the ice in there somewhere, but Wilson’s comment on your outfit is perhaps the only possible way to make you feel worse at this very moment. “Didn’t get a chance to say it last night.”

“I didn’t mean to interrupt,” you whisper as he pulls out of the driveway, catching the glance Sam shoots your way in your peripheral. “Am I in trouble?”

“Should you be?” the way he says it is almost teasing, but when you fully turn your head to read the look on the consigliere’s face, you find a seriousness in the scrutiny of his eyes.

The repetitive tick of the blinker fills the space between you, and the uncertainty in your tone shakes, “I… I don’t think so?” Your exhale does, too, “But if you haven’t noticed, I’m kind of making this up as I go.”

Sam smiles a little at that, but does nothing to soothe your nerves, “You’ve already got into enough trouble as it is.” When he hits the gas, heading towards Hell’s Kitchen, your stomach drops at the truth of it, “No reason to be adding to it just ‘cause of what happened in there.” He switches gears, not bothering to look away from the road when he asks, “Besides, you already know how important discretion is. I think you can avoid a lot of trouble in the future, if you don’t start gettin’ forgetful.”

You’re not stupid enough to miss the threat veiled by his polite, laid-back posture, or the tap of his fingertips on the steering wheel in time with the low beat of the music on the radio. It’s clear, and you didn’t need to be told to keep your mouth shut any more explicitly than you already had.

So you settle into the leather of Sam’s passenger seat, and stiffly reply, “Thank you for the advice.”

“Any time,” and he almost sounds genuinely friendly, as he reaches out to turn the radio up, commenting off-handedly, “I _love_ this song.”

Even the jarring revelation of Sam’s mildly endearing habit of humming throughout the thirty-minute drive back to your place can’t free you from the unease rocking in your stomach. The feeling that keeps you from relaxing entirely into the passenger seat, borne of the dwelling thoughts of your arrangement with Barnes. Locked into this predicament, with no apparent solution.

You don’t want to admit that the comment in the living room had bothered you at all, but it stung to be labeled unimportant despite the fact that you weren’t hoping for anything more than that. What would _importance_ get you, anyway? The last thing you needed was to be deemed _important_ to a man like Barnes.

_No_ , you decide, _it would be even worse than being indebted to him._

“I’ll see ya’ next time,” Sam grins wide and gap-toothed when he lets you out of his car, like this was normal in the least. Perhaps it was, for him. Maybe he drove home stray women from Bucky’s place all the time. _Who knows?_

“Yeah,” it’s all you can manage, and even that much is enough to make your mood sour, because the thought of _next time_ is something you can’t decide which way to feel about. On the one hand, you never wanted it to go on for this long in the first place— you just wanted things to be like they were before you had ever formally met James Barnes, despite the gnawing suspicion that your life could never be the same after these past two days.

On the other, the thought of him lit a match so deep within you that it threatened to burn you up from the inside-out until nothing was left aside from a charred shell of the person you once were. You didn’t like him— how _could_ you like him? He was objectively the worst— but you couldn’t deny that the moments alone, once kept to yourself, had been invaded by thoughts of _him_. If there was one thing Barnes was good at, it was ravaging anything he came into contact with, and you were no exception to the rule.

Your key turns your lock in autopilot, feet dragging onto the familiar shag carpet of your living room floor as your door shuts behind you. Leaning on it, you let the sigh escape you, along with all the relief at returning to the one place that was without the scrutiny of anyone else. Promising to never take this slight slice of sanctuary for granted again, you set off towards your bathroom in an effort to rid yourself of the remaining evidence clinging to your skin as best you can.

Distracting yourself from your thoughts is easier than scrubbing the ache from your bones, with the added aid of the television and the phone in your hand. Wasting most of the day on take-out and reruns is all you’re truly in the mood for, because the ache he’s left has settled in you a fatigue that only lulls with the late evening. The incoming workday is the only excuse you have to drag yourself off the couch in order to make sure your bag is full of all that you will need tomorrow.

You’re midway through an inventory of your purse, when a rap on your front door breaks the relaxation that had finally seeped into you. Zipping the hoodie you had been satisfied to settle in for the night with, there’s a hesitance in your step, but who can blame you? It’s nearly nine in the evening, and you aren’t expecting visitors.

A glance through the peephole is all that’s needed for confusion to cement in your brow, opening the door to expose your pacing friend, “ _Misty?_ What—”

It’s as far as she lets you get before shoving past you and into your apartment, rounding on you with a fiery concern swirling in her eyes, _“Just what do you think you’re doing?”_

“Uh,” you drawl, shutting the door you still had a handle on, “You’re going to have to be more specific than that—”

An incredulous huff passes her lips, as she digs into the bag hanging at her hip and slaps down a stack of photographs on your coffee table, “Don’t play dumb. You know I’m talking about _this_!” Your eyes follow the trail she points towards them, and a step closer is all it takes for you to scoop up the stack. They’re of you, in the car this morning, pulling out of Bucky’s brownstone with Sam in the driver’s seat. Flipping through the photographs, you find there’s maybe ten of them in total, chronicling not only your exit, but the exit of everyone else who had been present this morning.

“You’re following me?” you can’t help the disgust in your voice, or the shock at the idea.

“No,” she grits, snatching the photos back with as much venom as was in her tone, “we were sitting on _Barnes_ , ‘cause I got a tip that some key players from Harlem were going to meet him this morning, but imagine my surprise when _you_ come out of that house! What were you doing there?” She’s never said your name like an accusation before, but when she does it for the first time, it stings more than you ever thought it could, “Look, I only came here, ‘cause I want to believe you’re not a part of this, but if you don’t tell me everything you know—”

“I don’t know anything!” but you don’t even believe it yourself; it sounds like a lie, and lying to Misty had never been something you were able to get away with. She stares at you for a passing beat, and that’s all it takes to feel like a suspect, rather than an old friend.

“What business does Barnes have in Harlem?” she presses, distrust in her eyes, “You were in that house. Why were they meeting? You can’t expect me to believe you don’t know a single—”

“I don’t know _anything_ about the business Stokes had with Barnes, and I don’t want to know!” it feels like she’s caging you in, and you’re left wringing your hands in front of your door as tears brim in your eyes, “I don’t want to know any of it—”

Her voice softens a bit at your state, as she takes a step towards you, “We used to tell each other everything, and I know it’s been a while since we talked— _really_ talked— but I need you to know that you can still talk to me. Whatever they’ve got you involved in, I’ll try to help you get out of it.”

“You already know what Donnie did to them,” your laugh is strained, more like a scoff, as you fix her with a wry amusement. “Unless you have two million dollars in your purse, no one can help me get out of this anymore, Misty.”

“Do you even want help?” her voice raises with her accusation, and you see none of the understanding of a friend in her eyes as she looks at you in bewilderment, “The girl I grew up with wasn’t a quitter, but the woman standing in front of me is sounding like one.” There’s a sadness there, as she continues with a solemn acceptance, “You should know, I can’t protect you, the deeper you get into this.”

“What, are you going to arrest me for walking out of the man’s house?” it’s too defensive, too abrasive a tone for a woman who you’ve considered your friend, but you can’t help it, with the toxic soup of emotions threatening to spill at any moment, “Last I checked, that isn’t a crime.”

She looks stunned, like you’ve slapped her, and before she can help it, you see the hurt in her eyes, but not even the bitter regret can take back what’s been done, “Me arresting you will be the least of your worries, if you help him.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

She’s collected herself well, for someone who shouldn’t have to hide her emotions from you, and it’s cold, when she brushes your question off, “I can’t comment on an open investigation.”

Your momentary pridefulness will probably be your biggest regret of the evening, because you meet her hurt with only more defensiveness, “At the end of the day, I’ve gotta’ protect myself, and you’ve gotta’ do your job.” It’s distant to your ears, as you step out of her path to tug your front door back open, but the guilt doesn’t set in until after you say, “You need to leave out the back. They could be watching my place, and I can’t have a cop get spotted here by one of Bucky’s guys.”

“So it’s ‘Bucky,’ now, huh?” the corner of her lips quirks upwards in disbelief, as she shoves the pictures back into her bag and makes her way past you. Stopping in the doorway, she looks back, and the genuine worry and hurt in her voice is something that churns your stomach, “Word on the street is, something’s about to go down in Brooklyn, and your new _friend_ is at the center of it. If you don’t get out of this before it’s too late, I don’t know if anything I do will be able to help you— and if you think _they’re_ gonna’ have your back, just know that Barnes has done worse to people he’s known longer than you. We just can’t prove it yet.” Glancing down to her hand, she takes a breath, before reaching out to place something in your own, “Despite what you may think, I don’t want you to get hurt. Wear it, if you want a chance of getting out of this thing before it blows up in your face.”

Staring down at the device in your palm, no larger than a button, your blood runs cold with the fear spiking its way up your spine, and not at all hidden by your hasty whisper, “ _A wire?_ I can’t have this! You’re gonna’ get me killed, Misty!”

“If you’re really in as deep as you think you are with them, WitPro may be the only chance you have of getting out. Girl, this,” taking your hand, Misty cups your fingers over, closing them into a fist over the bug, “is your chance. Consider it, and then call me when you’ve made the right choice.”

You want to tell her to take it back, to get the thing away from you as fast as she can; the thought of what will happen if you’re caught with it is too frightening to even think about for too long. Then, there’s the crushing idea of abandoning your life entirely if you _did_ entertain her suggestion and manage to get away with it, because witness protection will take everything left from you, you’re certain of that— and while you don’t have much as it is, what you do have is _yours_. You’ve worked damn hard to get to where you were before all this started, but that same safe comfortability is something you’re uncertain you’ll ever be able to get back to even if you do dare to wear this noose in your hand, provided you don’t hang yourself with it.

None of those things matter, though, given the fact that by the time you look up from the device, she’s already gone, and you’re left standing there with the door open like a ghost, haunted by her every word.

A cold sweat has broken out, by the time you shut the door and lock it. Sliding down to your knees, you fall apart right then and there, tears flowing, ugly down your face. Feeling so completely out of your depth that you have no clue which way is up in your effort to break the surface and keep from drowning while the soup boils over.

You do want to be done with all this, from the bottom of your heart, you _do_ , and if this wire can help you have some sort of life past this, you _should_ do it, right? But there’s a part of you that’s more dangerous to Misty’s cause than even the fear for your own well-being. Some idiotic, foolish, budding sliver of your consciousness that whispers _I don’t want to do this._ That over these past two days of discomfort lacing your veins, electrifying you with stress and anxiety and fear and _pleasure_ — you’ve felt more alive than you have over years of keeping your head down and doing what’s right.

It’s fucked up, twisted, and if these tears falling freely and the terror in your veins make you a coward, then so be it. It’s honest, at the very least, and this disintegration of your entire life in the short span of two whole days has you _scared_. You downright hate yourself for the realization of it, but the piece of yourself that comes anywhere close to feeling anything at all for him is the part that completely petrifies you, possibly even more than Barnes himself ever could.

Feeling more alone than you ever have, in all your years of looking out for yourself— trusting no-one to take care of you any better than you could— you break apart into each fragile piece to be laid bare, fragmented on the floor. Sobs, unrelenting and ruthless, wrack through you, until you’ve cried yourself numb, completely out of control, which is a feeling you’ve gone to great lengths to keep from having to confront. This vulnerability is foreign, and you’re abandoned. Lost to the tide until it’s had its fill of you, waiting for it to have enough mercy to eventually wash you back to shore.

When it does, you’re shaking, shivering not from the chill, but the intensity of the unfortunate understanding that you have absolutely no clue where to go from here. The idea of reaching out, of taking the help Misty is trying to offer is tainted with your own doubt, and in the end, the only judgement you trust is your own, like you always have, however muddied and flawed your decisions may turn out to be.

It’s soft, your practiced self-soothing, passing your lips in a hallowed whisper, as desperate as a prayer, _“I can do this.”_ The words are an attempt at grounding yourself, regardless of how hopeless they sound, or the fact that they’re a mere echo of your childhood. It still works, here and now, if only a little. When you repeat them, they sound more believable, despite tasting like salt and a bitter deceit on your tongue, but piecing yourself back together again was something you haven’t forgotten how to do.

While your legs may shake, you stand. Slowing your heartbeat with as many breaths as it takes to feel somewhat steady, the resolve to survive this beats out any other emotion within you, glaring down at the wire until you can’t stand it anymore.

It takes a minute to decide what to do with it, until you settle on avoidance entirely. Pushing back the decision for a later date seems best. Waiting for when you’ll have a solid footing, rather than the quicksand you kept slipping down into.

It sits, hidden in the only place you can think, along the inner crevices of your small bathroom cabinet beneath the sink, shoved behind the glass cleaner and bleach. It’s almost comically simple, filing away such an important device like it was just another object to be forgotten. But as the days pass and you’re left without the next of Barnes’ summons, you find that the weight of your indecisiveness is only a little lighter to bear. Misty’s words, however, remain as freshly cutting as when she first stepped foot outside of your apartment.

You don’t know if it’s a blessing or a curse, that you’re left to your thoughts for the next few days. Allowed to throw yourself back into your routine, forced to mimic a sense of normalcy with every smile and polite interaction from behind your desk at work, feeling out of place after what’s occurred. Wondering if it’s a good thing that Barnes hasn’t come to collect on your deal again, and hating the part of you that keeps thinking about it— about him. You find, in those passing days, that you can distract yourself so effectively that a sense of believable ordinariness might eventually be achievable, if it weren’t for the news of increased gun violence growing on the streets, reminding you of your looming reality.

You might be projecting, but it seemed the whole of the city was simmering with anticipation for _something_. An unease simmered in the air, coating the everyday monotony in a film of this foreign feeling— like the warning at Misty’s lips. She’d been right, something was stirring out there, and the animals of New York City were restless as if a storm was incoming. But you’ve been out of the game for so long that you can’t figure if it’s a downpour or a hurricane; you don’t have the connections anymore to ask.

All you know for a fact as Friday rolls around again, with the wishful thinking that perhaps Barnes has made your life infinitely more uncomplicated and forgotten about your existence entirely, is the slow, filtered scroll of the news week mutely announcing from the television in your office a sudden string of vehicular fires in Brooklyn.

You should be content, with his lack of contact, but you’ll blame the fact that you aren’t on the electricity in the air. The shifting in the wind, and the swaying steel beams of the buildings towering above Manhattan leave you apprehensive, as you abandon the slice of your secretarial life at the end of the workday. The screaming of children as they’re carted off into school buses has long since dulled at five in the evening, and you’re left standing on the concrete steps of _Public School 354_ with only the few straggling teachers that leave around the same time as you lock up the front office.

Your eyes are so preoccupied with your feet, ensuring you don’t tumble down the five steps, that an unexpected call of your name sends your head snapping up to attention right as you reach the last step. The brick railing is rough against your palm as you stand there, paused in your descent by the stunning realization that is the man in all black leaning against a Jaguar illegally parked in the fire lane.

Bucky grins at you, wide and cocky, donned in a knee-length overcoat and an equally as darkly shaded pair of jeans. You hate to admit, he looks like sin itself, as he shoots a small wave in your direction like this was at all an appropriate place for him to turn up in search of you. Despite the sunglasses shading his eyes in the evening light, you feel yourself flush warmly under the combination of his scrutiny and the heated annoyance that challenges the racing of your heartbeat at the sight of him.

“What are you doing here?” by the time you’re standing in front of him, he looks pretty pleased with himself at catching you so off-guard, “You can’t just show up where I _work_.”

“Why’s that?” he shoots back with a mocking amusement, arching his brow over his shades. It’s too casually teasing not to be somewhat jarring to be coming from him, “Didn’t you miss me?”

“I—” you clear your throat, glancing down the sidewalk as you bite your tongue to keep from blurting out how you _didn’t_ , just to spite him. “How did you even know where I work? Are you stalking me, now?” the change in subject is too direct, and the absence of a strict denial only seems to stroke his ego more, if the way he chuckles is any indication.

“Trust me, I don’t have the time to stalk you, doll,” he taps the glass of the passenger window with his knuckles, and it rolls down a bit, letting you spot the teenager in the driver’s seat, “but he’s a whiz when it comes to computers.” Your glare softens a bit when Peter shoots you a slightly awkward wave, as Bucky asks him, “How was it you found out where she worked, kid?”

“Uh,” Peter shifts in his seat, bending his neck a little to get a better look at you as he explains awkwardly, “the staff directory for schools are public online, so I mean, it really wasn’t that hard to search for—”

Bucky taps the hood of the Jaguar, slightly sarcastic, “Isn’t it just amazing what you can find online these days?”

“Like that makes it any better.”

“Don’t take it personal; I make it my business to know everything about the people workin’ for me.”

“Oh, is that what I am?” you don’t know if you have a right to be offended, with the arrangement you had, but the label is something you can’t help but be put-off at, “Your _employee_?”

“I’ll call you whatever you like, doll,” _god_ , why did every word he’s ever said to you make you want to scream? He’s infuriating, grinning at you like he doesn’t take anything seriously. Bucky shrugs dismissively, bunching the fabric of the jacket along his shoulders, before he eases off the side of the car to open the back door, “Hop in. We’re on a schedule.”

“A schedule?” you repeat warily, glancing to Peter, but he’s already rolling up the passenger window.

“You know, a _schedule_ … A list of time-sensitive events—”

Interrupting Bucky, you cross your arms, “Thanks, I _know_ what a schedule is—”

“I sure would hope so, or I bet you’d make one god-awful secretary,” Bucky makes you want to slap that shit-eating grin right off his face. You know he’s just fucking with you like he did last week, but there’s a part of this version of him— the one that seems to enjoy laughing at your expense— that can almost make you forget just who, exactly, he is, beneath the playful veneer. He was giving you whiplash. You realize you’re staring, when he nods for you to enter first, “Come on, let’s go.”

One could argue that getting in the car with him and Peter was an objectively bad idea, but at the moment it’s at the bottom of the list of stupid decisions you’ve made lately, and you doubt it will be the last, so without much hesitation, you do as he says, asking, “Where are you taking me?”

“What, you don’t like surprises?” is all the answer you get, accompanied by a wolfish grin as he advances right behind you, leather seats creaking in your attempt to slide your escape to the other side of the car. Leaning forward, Bucky taps Peter on the shoulder, “Let’s go, kid.”

“Okay.”

“For the record,” his shades can’t hide the side-eye with which Bucky observes your defensive whine of, “I _do_ like surprises! I just _don’t_ like not knowing where we’re going when…” you gesture vaguely with your hands before they smack down to rest at your thighs in exasperation, “when I barely even know you!”

_“‘Barely?’”_

_“You know what I mean,”_ comes quickly in an exhale, slightly scandalized by the suggestive set of his jaw. Bucky hums thoughtfully, seemingly debating whether or not to indulge you with his attention affixed beyond the window as Hell’s Kitchen passes you by.

“Do you like art?”

“What?”

“I said, ‘Do you like art?’”

“I, uh, yeah, I guess, I like it?” it sounds like a question, the way you stammer it out, rather than a definitive announcement of your tastes, but you can’t help it. He’s effectively thrown you off, wondering where he was going with this.

“That sounded convincing,” Barnes mutters sarcastically, hitching his hips on the seat to dig his phone from his back pocket, vibrating lowly under the sound of the radio. By the time he’s placed it to his ear, you’ve begrudgingly accepted the fact that getting a straight answer out of him is a lost cause, _**“Hey, man! Yeah, of course I’m coming. I’m on my way right now.”**_

You decide to search for your answer elsewhere, since straining to hear the low murmur of whoever was on the opposite end of the phone call would likely turn just as fruitful as asking Bucky a direct question was.

_**“Just keep him calm…”** _

Peter catches your gaze from the rearview mirror, and you lean forward in your seat until you’re looking over the driver’s seat at him, “Peter?”

Peter’s eyes snap back to the road, “Y-Yes, ma’am?”

“Will you please tell me where we’re going?” you’re trying your best sugary-sweet authoritative voice. The one that you’ve seen the elementary teachers use to make rowdy first-graders snap into a perfectly straight line in the hallways, and you’re banking on the fact that Peter was probably the _least threatening_ gangster you’ve ever met for it to possibly work.

“I, uh, I don’t know,” it’s a silly lie, and you can tell that Peter regrets even going with it, with the way he shifts uncomfortably in his seat.

“You don’t know, but you’re driving us there?” a look towards Bucky is all you need to know he’s still on the call, but you’re certain he’s watching you through his shades. Any chance you have of getting it out of Peter was thinning, if it was ever there at all.

_**“I don’t know, tell him he’s got nothing to be nervous about, or something.”** _

“Peter,” you try again, a bit less sweet and a little more authoritarian, as he stops at a light behind a slew of traffic, “just tell me. Why the big secret?”

“I— um— It’s—” he’s stammering over his words, and you think you nearly have him when he spares a glance at you again while you give him a look that you hope says _you can tell me_ , “here… on the Upper West Side—”

_**“Hold on,”**_ Bucky sighs into the phone, reaching out with his free hand to tug you back into your seat with a gentle grip on your shoulder, “Quit with the third-degree on the kid, doll.”

“If you would just _tell me_ , I wouldn’t have to ask Peter—”

Before you can really get started pleading your case, Bucky interrupts to end his call with, _ **“We’re around the corner, alright? Bye.”**_ Shoving his phone back into his pocket, he addresses you with a squeeze at your thigh, effectively shutting you up entirely when he murmurs low, “You need to learn a little patience.” Not above pouting at the accusation, you do so openly, wanting to rebuke him, “Parker, when you get through this traffic jam, join us, alright? There should be a park waitin’ for you. We’re walking the rest of the way down the block.” He sighs at the questioning look Peter gives him from the front seat, offering only, “Steve’s having a crisis,” as an explanation.

And with that he has you by the hand, tugging you out of the stalled car and into the traffic, while you mutter under your breath, “And _I’m_ the impatient one?”

“You are,” Bucky shoots back around a smile, having heard you even over the horns honking from the delayed cars you weave through to get to the sidewalk. His hand is warm, even through the leather of his glove, holding tight as he maneuvers strategically around the other pedestrians with you in tow.

He’s nearly dragging you along, with those long strides of his, and it takes two of yours to keep up with him until you get to the street corner, the whine in your throat sounding somewhat breathless due to his pace, “Bucky, please, where are we going?”

His hand squeezes your own as he points up the street, thankfully slowing his strides to a less urgent walk alongside you, “Have you ever been to an art opening?” Not waiting for your answer, he continues, “Sam and I have been trying for years to get Steve to take the plunge and sell some of his work.”

“Wait, Steve’s an artist?” this was news to you, and you had to admit that the thought of Rogers pouring painstakingly over a canvas wasn’t something you would have pictured him doing.

“Steve’s a damn good artist,” there’s pride in Bucky’s voice, a simmering excitement in the way he builds up his friend when he turns his head to take a look at you, “but try telling him that and it’s, ‘There should be more shadowing,’ or, ‘It would be better if I hadn’t put the tree so far to the left.’ You won’t believe the trouble it was, getting him to be satisfied enough with something so that we could show it to a curator.” He sighs, “ _Галерея Романова_ is lucky to have him, if you ask me.”

“Galereya Romanova?” your own pronunciation is not as immaculate as his, slightly surprised with Bucky’s apparent familiarity with the Russian language, but not so much as you were with your destination. It was an art gallery on the Upper West Side that had managed to make a name for itself in the last few years by keeping a highly selective inventory, yet managing to sell its installations for no less than several thousands a piece. Your guess as to why they had become so popular over such a short amount of time resided solely in the assumption that all rich people care about is the illusion of exclusivity.

But maybe you were wrong. ( _Doubtful_.)

Your astonishment at Steve having landed an opening there must be evident in your voice, with how knowing Bucky’s smile is, “The owner’s an old friend.” That’s all he offers you in a way of explanation as you near the red overarching entrance of the gallery itself.

It was modern, like most galleries these days seemed to be, but subdued in a way that seemed to state its importance need not be boasted from the side street it curved into. The glass door is already open, chatter and soft alternative synth-pop leaking out onto the street while the warmth of Bucky’s hand leaves your own to usher you inside, a far more gentlemanly gesture than you would have expected from him, “After you.”

Any worry that you were under-dressed in your business-casual skirt and overcoat is quickly banished from your mind with the array of people within, lingering about the gallery as they took in the fresh art displayed along the walls. It seemed a selection of different artists were opening tonight, but you couldn’t be too sure from such a quick glance about the room. Mingling amongst them seems uncomfortably intimidating, but luckily Bucky doesn’t abandon you on the first step.

Rather, his hand rests at the small of your back as he murmurs, “I think that’s them over there,” and weaves you left around a particularly large group of people standing annoyingly right in front of the doorway.

Sam’s in the middle of a long swig of whatever was in the glass he held when he spots the man beside you, relief dawning along his features as he moves away from Steve and towards the two of you in an effort at reaching beyond the earshot of his companion who seemed to be having an intense conversation with a red-headed woman, “There you are, finally! Man, I thought you were gonna’ be a no show, you were taking so long!”

“Don’t be crazy, Sam. Of course I would make an appearance,” Bucky sighs, looking over Sam’s shoulder and towards Steve, “How’s our boy doin’?”

“Not much better than what I told you on the phone,” Sam snorts in a sort of sardonic amusement that is almost antithetical to the seriousness in which the people around you were observing the artistry with. “I told him that everyone loves his stuff, and Nat’s trying to convince him the same, but he keeps tapping that glass.”

Even eyeballing Steve from where you stand, you can tell he’s nervous. Fidgeting with the drink in his hand is the least of it, with the closed-off stance he carries and the deep frown giving him premature wrinkles in his forehead. Arms crossed loosely against his chest, he taps the rim of the glass he leans along his forearm, tattooed skin on display with the push of his dress shirt’s sleeves to his elbows. His shoulders were tense, back rigid, as he glanced towards the painting he stood before with a look of dissatisfaction and skepticism. You would have thought this level of discomfort impossible from the man you’ve come to associate with a stern glare and brooding demeanor, if you weren’t seeing how he shifted from foot to foot yourself.

You don’t doubt its truth when Sam adds, not quite jokingly, “I know he’s five minutes away from saying, ‘forget it,’ and sneaking out the back.”

“Fucks sake,” Bucky groans, plucking the sunglasses from his face to hang them from the collar of his black crew neck. “Let me at him, then. Maybe I can convince Steve it isn’t the end of the world to have some critics looking at his art.”

“Good luck with that, big guy.”

Following the two of them towards Steve and the woman, Nat, you start to catch some of what she’s telling him, “… everything so far. I’ve already had an offer on your skyline, but I know we can get more for it than—”

“Как поживаешь, Наташа!” Bucky boldly interrupts as he slaps down a hand on Steve’s shoulder, squeezing when he gets a grip and looking entirely satisfied that he’s managed to make the blonde startle.

Steve jumps at the impact, before relaxing at the sight of his friend, “Shit, Buck, where’d you come from—?”

Natasha’s hand settles on her hip, unwrapping an accusatory finger from around the stem of her wine glass to point at Steve, “Лучше, чем Стив, это точно. Он нервничает как олень. Сделайте что-нибудь, пока критики не почувствовали запах крови в воде.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” Steve drones sarcastically in response.

“It’s the truth! You’re jumpy. You need to relax.”

“I’m relaxed! What, don’t I look relaxed?” his protests meet unconvinced stares, “Fine, I might be a little nervous.”

_“A little?”_ Bucky scoffs, “Sam called me on my way over here; told me you looked more shook up than that time in Budapest—”

“And he was right,” Sam tacks on as he slides up beside Natasha, weathering the scolding glare Steve shoots him.

“Steve,” Bucky elongates the name in a sigh, turning his friend by the shoulders to view the painting upon the wall, “look at that.”

“What do you think I’ve been doing?”

“That,” gesturing with an open palm at the monotone colors depicting a child looking out upon the skyline of Manhattan, Bucky smiles, “is art, man. It makes you _feel_ hopeful, doesn’t it? You can tell by the look in that kid’s eyes that he wants so many things, and this city’s gonna’ give him it all. It’s next level from some of the stuff you see nowadays.”

“That’s what I’ve been saying,” Sam agrees. “It’s such a good piece— all of them are, Cap. You don’t need to be so anxious about them.”

Steve’s jaw clenches, as he scrutinizes the painting for a long moment, before glancing back to Bucky at his side, “You’re serious?”

“Would I blow smoke up your ass about something like this?”

“There’s not a doubt in my mind that you would.”

“Ugh,” groans Bucky, as he glances your way, “help me out here, doll. Tell him what you think?”

“I, uh,” you squirm at having been put on the spot, “don’t know too much about these kinds of things.”

“Of course you do,” Natasha counters, nodding towards the artwork. “What does it make you feel?”

“I really don’t think I’m qualified—”

Sam interrupts you with the wave of his hand, “Aw, come on, humor us?”

Taking a breath, you take a moment to look at it, feeling your face burn with the scrutiny of the others watching you take in the piece. It was a beautifully detailed work, definitely. So detailed, that if you didn’t take too long to look at it, you would at first think it was a photograph, rather than a drawing. You can’t tell if the child depicted is a boy or a girl, but that doesn’t really matter. What matters is the city skyline, towering above the child and dwarfing it, and the look on the child’s face. Steve has captured a sense of awe, and slight intimidation, in the face of the child, as it gazes up at the buildings around it.

When Bucky says your name, you tear your eyes away from it, “Well?”

“What do you think?” Steve asks, and for the first time, you think Rogers looks something close to scared of you, behind the blank expression he tries his best to hold.

“It’s… _curiosity_ ,” you announce, turning your gaze back to the canvas. “It feels like those days when you just want to drive around to discover something new. The kid looks curious to me. They want to explore everything around them, and are almost afraid of what they’ll find, but they’re going to do it anyway.” Catching Steve’s stare again, you find he watches you with less fear and more interest, as if unaware the painting could come across as you see it, “It’s something I could see myself putting in my apartment.”

A silence settles upon the group, until Natasha laughs, “You’re a better critic than you think.”

“See,” in a softer tone, Bucky reassures Steve, “what did I tell you? It makes people feel things.”

“Alright,” Steve concedes, shoulders relaxing slightly and earning a raise of Sam’s glass in return, “I figure I’ll have to believe you.”

“I’ll drink to that!”

“Speaking of drinks,” drawls Bucky, as his hand catches around your waist, “let’s go get some and look at Steve’s other masterpieces.” Rolling his eyes, Steve takes a sip of his drink, but there’s a smile flirting with the corner of his lips that can’t be so easily hidden with the glass.

“Sure,” you nod your head, but Natasha catches Bucky with a grip on his upper arm as he starts to pass her.

“I need to speak with you,” her tone is more strict, more serious than when she’d been humoring Steve mere seconds ago, looking towards you in a way that makes it obvious she would rather have this conversation with Bucky without you privy to it. “Our friends in Brighton Beach have been having some car trouble. I’m sure you’ve heard.”

“На территории Братства вы сами решаете свои проблемы. Или ты не помнишь нашу сделку?” you tense at the sound of his voice. It’s cold, not at all friendly like he was a moment before. Even if you didn’t understand him, you can tell he’s talking business, leaving you to wonder what role Natasha has in all of this. Bucky’s eyes are trained on her icily, slight arch to his brow, but she doesn’t back down like you’ve seen most do when leveled with that glare. Unafraid of his authority.

No, her posture remains relaxed, but the corner of her lips slip upwards as if she’s amused by his words, “Да, мы помним, но наши проблемы - это ваши проблемы, судя по тому, что я слышал. Не так ли?”

Bucky can’t stop his frown, flattening the upturn of his lips into a thin line, and any façade of a friendly interaction is lost in the minute instant, “Нет. But, I’ll see if I have time before I leave.”

If you weren’t paying attention, you would have missed the way her serene smile falters at his words, “I think it’s better we talk now.” She gestures further into the back of the gallery, where there seems to be a hallway, “It’s extremely important.”

When Bucky smiles at you, it’s clearly forced, “Doll, why don’t you get yourself something you like to drink? It’s an open bar. I’ll come find you.”

“Uh,” it’s clear, it isn’t a question, and while the idea of wandering this opening alone is already making you anxious, you know better than to refuse him, “sure. Do you want me to get you something?”

“Nah, I’ll grab something after we’re done catching up,” he’s lying, or something adjacent to it. You can hear it in his voice, tip-toeing around the edges of the truth, and it shocks you— the uncomfortable churn of jealousy in your stomach. _Where is that coming from?_ You smother it down, around the time his lips brush your forehead in a brief kiss, and he murmurs with a tight humor, “Don’t wander off too far.”

Then, he’s gone, walking off towards the back of the gallery with Natasha, who ushers him towards the hallway leading to god-knows-what.

Not your business, anyway.

You weren’t curious.

_Not one bit._

The feeling of someone watching you drags your eyes to the right, and you catch those of Sam’s, as he listens to Steve talking through his process when creating the skyline piece. Rather than be investigated any longer by them, you head the direction of the makeshift open bar that the caterers had set up at the front of the gallery.

You spot Peter listening to one of the bartenders there, as the man listed off, “We have a good selection of wines, beer, champagne, and liquor—”

“Do you have soda? I’m, uhm, only seventeen, sir,” and you really can’t help it— the humored sound that comes out of your nose on your exhale— but Peter catches sight of you when it does, frowning in his confusion at your entertainment, “What?”

“Nothing,” you hold up your hands, unable to keep from chuckling, “I didn’t say a thing.’’

“Sorry, no soda, I’m afraid, just ginger ale and water,” comes from the bartender in the midst of Peter’s distraction, before then asking you, “Can I get you something, miss?”

“Yeah, I’ll try,” you hum, taking a look at the selections, before settling on, “a ginger ale, and, what do you want, Peter?”

Peter debates it, before rushing out his words like he was embarrassed for taking the time to answer, “Oh, uh, the same, please.”

“Alright, so two ginger ales,” you order, and the bartender fishes out two cans from the nearby cooler, while you tack on, “oh, and can we get two wine glasses?”

“What for?” comes from Peter, earning a nudge to his side.

“So we can look like proper art snobs with our wine glasses, of course.”

The bartender looks only mildly irritated, as he pours your cans of ginger ale into stemmed glasses, but it’s worth it to make the kid smile, which he sheepishly does as he takes the glass from your hand.

“This is so cool,” Peter’s admission comes as the hour passes into the next, in the midst of following you around the gallery while you admire the paintings.

“The art, or the fact that no-one in here knows you’re drinking ginger ale,” is about as far as you get into teasing him when Sam walks up and drapes an arm around Peter’s shoulders, hooking a finger into the collar of his jacket to tug it down over the spider tattoo there just to pick on him.

“Hey, _Spider-man_ ,” Sam chimes as Peter brushes his hand off, “so you’re the chauffeur again today, huh?”

“Yeah,” Peter flushes, voice hitching a bit defensively with embarrassment, “the boss says I gotta pass the drivers test this go-around, so he’s been keeping me driving.”

“Wait— _you don’t have your license?”_ you may have sounded a little scandalized, but with good reason. _God, you’re a miracle to be alive—_

“Don’t sound so upset, I have a permit. That’s basically a license, anyway.”

_No. No, it’s not._

“I don’t know why you can’t pass that test. You drive as good as the rest of us when you’re on the road! What’s goin’ on with you when you’re at the DMV?”

“It’s different, driving around with just you guys or my aunt,” chewing his inner cheek, Peter recalls, “when I get in the car with somebody holding a clipboard, watching my every move, I get so worried I’ll mess up that I _do_ mess up.”

“You’ve gotta’ learn how to chill, seriously,” Sam sighs, “or Barnes will have you on driving duty until you’re probably forty.”

Peter’s eyes widen, alarm clear on his face, _“Forty?!”_

“Oh, I’m sure that’s not—”

Just when you’re about to tell the poor kid that Sam was just messing with him, you hear, “That’s right. Forty,” as Bucky returns to your side, resting his arm over your shoulders as casually as he teases, “so you’d better pass that test this time, isn’t that right?”

You’re not really paying attention to the conversation anymore, as your focus shifts to the glaring red hair at the opposite end of the gallery. Natasha looks dissatisfied, lingering at the outskirts of the gathering as she talks quickly into a phone, inevitably disappearing once again into the back hallway where she’d led Bucky for their talk. Whatever was going on was enough to take the owner from her own art opening, one of the most important events a gallery could host.

That’s when you have the startling realization that you had been enjoying yourself— _were_ enjoying yourself. In this roomful of some of the most infamous people in all of New York, here you were, laughing with them— joking with them, like they weren’t who they were and haven’t done the things you can imagine they’ve done.

The sense of security, however brief, that these public facets of their personalities have lulled you into, settles a strange feeling in your chest. Something empty, between the unsettling realization of it and the frightening idea that you could, in some context, like them even a little bit. It made things complicated and strange, and you’ve fallen silent as the chatter swells in your ears, withdrawing into yourself as the guilt spreads, because _you know better than this._

You know better than to like them, even a little bit. They aren’t going to be your friends. You’re only here to settle a debt, anyway.

_Right?_

“You alright, doll?” breaks you from your thoughts, along with the slight shake Barnes gives you against his side, to find that Peter and Sam have meandered over to another painting rather than the one you were standing in front of. He’s watching you in that same way that makes you feel like he can see right through you, studying you like he did the first time you ever set eyes on him.

A flat-out lie will be too unbelievable, so you go with omission instead, “Yeah, just, it’s really getting crowded in here,” hoping that perhaps that will be enough to satisfy the curiosity in his eyes.

“You don’t like crowds?”

“More of a social-battery running out sort-of thing, really,” the explanation comes easily, because it is true, in a way, just, perhaps, not as applicable to this situation as you were making it.

Bucky hums his understanding, “Needing a break?”

The question catches you so off-guard, that your answer comes before you think twice about it, “Yeah?” The last thing you expected was for him to care about your comfort, when he’s proven it to be the last thing on his list of concerns, or so you had thought.

Maybe it’s time to stop betting your assumptions against him, since you can’t win for losing.

Leaning close, Bucky murmurs near your ear, looking too mischievous to trust, “I know a quiet place. Follow me.”

And he lets you go. Detaches himself from your side with not so much as a glance over his shoulder until he’s nearly five feet ahead of you, and _for the love of god_ you really don’t know why you’re following him anywhere, but you do. Abandoning your drink on a passerby server’s tray, you trek after him. One foot in front of the other, you follow him through the crowd of people and around centerpiece sculptures until you’re deep into the gallery, and Bucky’s not so far ahead that you can’t reach out and take his hand if you had half a mind to.

You don’t, but you could.

The thought barely registers in your mind before you realize he’s leading you towards the back hallway that Natasha had gone down only moments before. Rounding into it, you find it vacant, lengthy, and framed with doors that seem to lead to either offices or storage, if you had to guess. You can’t be sure, as they’re denoted by a series of numbers, and nothing else. There’s an elevator at the end of the hallway, and a sign denoting an emergency exit around the corner. None of this seems to necessitate even a moment’s hesitation from Bucky, though, while he guides you further down the hallway, glancing towards the numbers with a sense of familiarity that you lack.

“I think this is the one,” Bucky murmurs, trying the door knob gently and sighing when he finds it’s locked. “Makes sense, they’d want it locked for the opening.”

“Are we even allowed to be back here?” you wonder aloud as you glance back towards the main gallery rooms, conversation more muffled with the distance of the hallway.

“Sure we are,” Bucky drawls with such a smooth confidence, fishing into his coat’s pocket for what you assume to be a key, that it almost feels like he’s knocked all the wind out of you when he admits, unbothered, “so long as we don’t get caught.” Then, he’s crouching down, and you barely catch the glint of the metal pick against the leather of his gloves before it’s in the lock.

“Bucky—!” the gasp of his name is about as far as you get before the door’s clicking open and he’s pushing you into the darkness within. The distant drone of conversation and whatever Marian Hill song was currently playing over the loudspeakers is muted almost entirely when the door shuts behind him, and you’re plummeted entirely into darkness. It takes a moment, in which you have the time to whisper accusingly, _“this is breaking and entering,”_ for him to flick on the light with a hit of the wall switch.

You can’t tell what’s more disorienting, the fact that he was bathed in red safelight, or the grin that has grown along his face, “Can’t break and enter into your own place.”

“I thought Natasha owned this gallery.”

“Eh,” he drags it out, walking around you while you get a better look at the room he’s taken you to, “she does, but you might say I’m an investor, of sorts.” Bucky walks further into the darkroom, lined with all the equipment needed to develop film, and leans himself on a nearby island counter-top upon which empty trays sit. “As in, I’m very invested in the success of this gallery,” you know he’s playing with you— this cat and mouse is not as unfamiliar as it first was, and his cheshire grin gives him away all too easily. “Don’t worry, doll, I’m not gonna’ ditch you if the Five-O catch us, like Donnie did.”

“You’re,” it slips, the annoyance in your voice, but you bite it back with a sigh, focusing instead on anything your eyes can catch. The sink, the small cabinet filled with labeled chemicals, the stacks of development paper, the enlargers—

Whatever, you didn’t need a straight answer. _Asshole_.

“I’m what?”

And you’re back on him, again, only he’s closer, with the few restless steps you’ve taken into the room. Chewing on the insult at your tongue, you know it isn’t smart, but thinking before you speak is something he’s far too good at testing your ability for.

“You’re…” you try again, confessing around the involuntary giggle at how ridiculous this all was, “ _such a jerk_. I knew I shouldn’t have told you that story.”

“Oh?” his brow arches, but there’s mirth bubbling in his voice, twisting around his joke at your expense, “Well, want to know what I think?”

“Not really.”

“Too bad. You’re gonna’ hear it anyway,” pushing off from his lean on the counter, he tucks his hands into his coat pockets as he moves to stand the short distance in front of you, grin only diminishing with the tilt of his head, “I think, this _goody-two-shoes_ act, is just that: an _act_.” This time, you do bite your tongue. Clench your jaw so tight it almost hurts, and you know your dentist is going to get onto you for grinding your teeth, but you can’t help it. He slips closer, stalking you in the buzzing crimson fluorescents, and you’re mute, as he picks you apart like he knows what he’s talking about, “As much as you like to hide behind that pure-white innocent routine— baby, you’re no lost lamb in the wolf’s den. You’ve just tricked yourself into thinking you are.”

He’s wrong; of course he is. He doesn’t _know_ you. How can he? You’ve shared nothing, in the grand scheme of your whole life, and you refuse to believe that he has any better insight than you have into yourself.

You bite back, but your voice quivers, as he traps you in with his approach, “Are you sure you aren’t talking about yourself, Bucky?”

“I don’t deny what I am anymore,” there’s no humor left in him when he says it, lost to the hollow void of his pupils until nothing but a chilling sincerity remains. “I just,” he sighs, filling the silence until he can choose his words, “compartmentalize it.”

The breath you take is slow, calculated. In through your nose, and out through your mouth, in an effort to taper the reaction you have to him. To his narrowing proximity, and the fact that his mood seems to change like the weather— or maybe it was stagnant, and everything else was all just to hide this. You can’t tell, and you hate it, how unreadable he is. How uncertain you are with how to handle every single thing he does.

“What are you, then?” you call his bluff, hoping it is one, because anything is better than the rabbit hole you’re about to follow him down if it isn’t. His smile returns, but it’s not as friendly, as laid-back, or as teasing as it once was. It’s casual, _sure_ , but it doesn’t reach his eyes— it’s as much a warning as a wolf baring its teeth.

“You’re smart enough not to have to ask that question,” he evades, once again, and you don’t know what you expected from him to begin with, other than this. If only you could do as much, when his hand reaches out, catching the side of your neck and dragging his thumb along your jaw, “Aren’t you?”

Any hint that this was a provocation is obscured by the coldness in his eyes. Distant, as he glances down to your lips, as if expecting some sort of an answer, but you can’t give him what you assume he wants. A complacent, agreeable nod of the head is impossible for you, because you feel the furthest from smart at this very moment.

You don’t know why you do it, or, maybe you do, but denying it is the easy route. You were tired of talking— of trying to traverse this landmine of a conversation— so you take the cowards way out, and drag him down by the wide-peak collar of his overcoat.

He leans into you, when you deepen the kiss, allowing you to rock back on the flats of your feet as his arm wraps around your waist to draw you in closer. He’s as you remember, insistent, impatient, infuriating against your tongue. The scratch of his beard irritates your skin but you no longer care; a soft groan has sounded in the back of his throat, and you’re senseless at the feeling of his lips on yours.

Your fingers card through his hair, as he staggers the two of you backwards slightly, until your hips hit the edge of the counter, and his hand slips from your waist to cage you there. The fact that you even enjoy this should make you feel guilty, but it doesn’t. If only in the present moment, you were free of the overthinking and debatable morality of wanting him like this.

In fact, you were free from thinking of anything much at all, as his teeth graze your bottom lip and he gasps into your mouth when your nails drag against his scalp. His whole body was warm, pressed firm against your own as he digs his fingers into the flesh of your hip, past the opening of your coat where he’s found your shirt easily rides up from your skirt. But even his hands are not left unhindered, with the leather of his gloves barring him from your skin. Cursing the chill in the air for the layers between you, you find yourself dwelling on the fabric of his collar— wool, you’re certain— as he drags the kiss out only to lead into another.

You don’t even realize you’ve said it, until you do, demand murmured along his lips, “The gloves— take them off.”

Feeling his smile, and his agreeable hum as he retreats his grasp on your skin, only to tug the gloves off to slap them against the counter beside you. Once again, his hand finds you, flesh-and-blood warmth at the skin of your stomach. Smoothing his palm against you until it curves at your hip, squeezing atop the eruption of goosebumps under the feeling of him, he leans away from your lips, and you have to keep from chasing the feeling.

“That better?” Bucky breathes low, blunt nails dragging their way up to your waist, bunching your shirt further.

Your face is hot, burning, with the way he watched you with those lidded eyes, tongue darting out to drag his bottom lip between his teeth as he waited for his answer. They were no longer cold, devoid of emotion, but instead sparking with the flame you’ve ignited within him. The silence was his friend, not yours, as his fingers draw languid patterns along your skin, inching their way ever upwards until they’re left dancing along your rib-cage.

The heat spreads down your neck, across your chest, trying your best to sound bold, but turning out soft, when you take the cold metal of his other hand in yours and place it on your other hip, “You.. have two hands, don’t you?”

There’s not much talking after that, just the sloppy collision of his lips on yours in the midst of sitting back atop the counter, knees knocking his thighs as he settled between them. Teasing his touch along the wire of your bra, it’s clear his intention is not to stop with only feeling you up.

The tragedy of it all is that you don’t want him to. He was a drug; these small doses you were getting of him kept building up, threatening to leave you craving more, addicted.

Instead of pulling away, you arch into him, whimpering against his tongue as he pushes your bra up, exposing you to the surrounding air.

He doesn’t stop there, his lips slurring on the edge of yours a heady instruction, “Lie back.”

You lick your lips absentmindedly, catching his eye as you do what you’re told, on display for him as much as the paintings were, though your audience was private. Spread along the fabrics of your coat, bunched slightly at the small of your back, any discomfort is minimal compared to the electrifying gaze that sweeps up your body when he descends upon you.

Your heart is thundering in your ears, as he drags his hands along the curve of your breasts, too teasingly for you not to fidget beneath the feeling of his breath, hot along the dip of your chest. He lays his mouth there, open and hot, with the kiss of his tongue burning along the faded remnants of the blemishes he’d left almost a week ago, and your rapid pulse. Thighs clenching about his hips, you feel his own coat drape along your knees, as he takes your breasts into his hands.

The contrast is probably the most torturous part of it. One hand just as warm as the rest of him while the other met barely room temperature, his thumbs swipe over your nipples as he kneads you gently, teeth catching on the swell of your right breast to drag along the flesh there. Mess of dark hair all you can focus on— a blessing, really, compared to the heated glances he occasionally would spare you.

Were you writhing beneath him, as his mouth encapsulates your right nipple, and the cool metal of his prosthetic tugged at the other? Undoubtedly, that was the only word for it. Catching his arms, his shoulders, his neck in your hands— anything is better than clamoring at the slick surface of the counter-top he’s laid you atop.

His name comes with a needy edge from your lips, as his tongue swipes along the sensitive area, seemingly deafening compared to the low muffle beyond the door. God, was it even locked? You can’t remember if he had locked it—

But he’s moved on by now, coming off your skin with a lewd popping sound that doesn’t aid in maintaining whatever sliver of composure you have left. Chuckling when you run your hands down your face to collapse defeatedly on the table beside your ears. In the red light, his pupils seem even darker, swallowing his irises into dilated lines separating the whites of his eyes.

He’s looking at you like before— like he wants to devour you.

Bucky’s hands catch at your knees, moving up the flustered skin until he’s pushing your skirt up in the same fashion he had your shirt and bra. Raising your hips into his touch, his fingers curl into the elastic of your underwear, pulling the fabric away slowly. Down your thighs and your knees, to your calves, until they slip over your ankles, where he lays a kiss, before working his way up like he had your stomach.

You don’t think you’ll ever get used to this particular brand of vulnerability, or the want stirring in your abdomen. Desire laces your veins as he tugs you closer, placing a kiss along the curve of your inner thigh, as your foot sits against the edge of the counter. _Fuck, he was going to do it again—_

“You did miss me,” he sounds too damn pleased, too proud of himself, as his index and middle drag through the folds of your pussy and come back wet. It’s a mixture of embarrassment and devastating lust that winds its way up your spine, a vine to a tree, rooted in your belly as his breath dances along the slick sensitivity of your clit, “or, did you just miss this?”

You don’t know if that’s one of those rhetorical questions of his, or if he genuinely expects an answer, but he has himself to blame for the reason he doesn’t get one. Tongue flattening against your core, any coherent thought goes straight out the window as he flicks against your clit with increasing pressure. The hair on his jaw scratches against your skin, delicious friction accompanying the heat that the pads of his tongue drip against the only nerve in your body that seems to matter at the moment.

Really, all you could focus on was the feeling, and trying your damned best to be quiet enough that anyone passing by this room wouldn’t hear your desperate moans within.

He lets you squirm more than last time, you realize, as you do your best not to buck into his face while he grips loosely along the thigh dangling off the end of the table. He doesn’t attempt to pin your hips down, or subdue the movement, as his nose swipes against you when his tongue dips lower.

Fuck, _fuck,_ **fuCK** _—_

The pain in your hand is nothing compared to the vivid letdown that was his mouth leaving you right as you were reaching your climax. Floor plummeting out from beneath you, is what it’s like, as you bite into your hand a little harder and whine in a guttural mixture of annoyance and pleasure. What game was he _playing_?

He meets your glare with too much unapologetic gratification. He knows _exactly_ what he did.

He doesn’t let you come down too far, though, with how he gets back into it with just as much pressure and intensity as he’d left off with. Soon enough, the rhythmic motion of his tongue and teeth drawing patterns against your clit has you right where you were before the edge. Dragging your fingers into his hair, he groans against you, vibrating through the depths of your core as he adds a digit to the mix, pushing it within you as torturously slow as he can possibly manage.

The name you bite down on your skin is muffled, wrapped around your hand and the moan that rips from your throat, as he drags another finger to join the first, throwing you, tumbling, into the high. Sparking pleasure, hot up every inch of your body, you’re lost in the euphoria for the moment as he fights your attempt to escape from the intensity of it with his grip on your thigh.

When he finally relents, you’re a heaving mess, gasping for air as he grins down at you, wetness glinting in the crimson light against his lips. You don’t give him the chance to escape, reaching out to pull him down to your lips in your post-orgasmic haze with the single thought in your mind being heavily influenced by the impulse to kiss him.

Smoothing your hand down his chest, your fingertips catch at his belt, tugging his hips ever so slightly closer when you murmur, “Isn’t this the part where I return the favor?”

“I’m guessing you’ve never done this before?”

“With a good teacher, I’m a quick study.”

His slight laugh is a breathless gust of wind against your teeth as you smile at him, blinking down at you, “Alright, doll.” He straightens himself to lean against the counter beside where you slip off to right your shirt and skirt. Bucky’s hands grip the counter-top on either side of him, watching you beneath an arched brow as you notice his sunglasses have now joined his gloves on the island in the time it took for you to fix your clothing.

The tone he uses is level, controlled, but heavy with the arousal that lingers in the tension of his shoulders, and the straining bulge at the front of his jeans, “Get on your knees for me.”

The floor is cold, hard tile, set in large blocks of about two feet on either side. It was obviously selected with the utility of the room in mind. When you kneel on your bare knees in front of him, you can’t help but selfishly wish they had selected some sort of impractical, out of place rug instead.

The discomfort fades to the back of your mind when you look up at him from this angle, seeing him urge you onwards with a wordless raise of his chin, as if to say, _“What are you waiting for?”_

You don’t need to be asked twice.

His belt comes loose easily enough, but you weren’t going to strip him down entirely. Kneeling before him in the middle of a darkroom you were still highly uncertain of the supposed legality of was so not the time or place for that. The buckle is one of those sleek, simple square ones and clinks against the metal button of his jeans when you push it aside to unzip him.

Bucky just stands and watches, letting you free him from the confines of his pants with an almost relaxed gaze, though it never once leaves you. Only when you have the weight of him in your hand, jutted towards you with all the strained desire that he has denied himself until now, does he interrupt the murmur of music and conversation seeping in beyond the door.

“Start slow, with your mouth,” his breathing is steady, but the grip he has on the counter is tight as you keep eye-contact as you do what he says, hearing the tightness in his voice when he adds, “head first— get me wet enough, with your tongue.”

Your heart was racing, not only from the anxiety of somehow messing this up, but from the dirty instruction he gives, as your lips kiss at the tip of his dick before softly taking it upon your tongue. Swirling it around, you explore him with your mouth, figuring you must be doing something right, with the way his breath hitches and his fingers release the counter to smooth along your temples, brushing back the hair that’s strayed there. Stroking to the back of your head, and urging you to take him deeper, as he finds a gentle, guiding grip in your hair.

A hint of worry laces your bloodstream as he guides you back by the hair, off of him, catching his eye questioningly only to be leveled entirely by the growl in his voice, as he grasps himself at the base of his shaft and positions the head of his length beneath your lips, “Spit.”

It takes a second to register what he’s said, but you’re already halfway into the action when your mind comes back to you, dripping saliva from your tongue onto him and swallowing thickly as he lubricates himself in it.

“Open,” his voice is gentle, as he tugs your head back, pushing you onto him once more, groaning softly in encouragement when your fingers find purchase against his thighs, “yeah, good girl, like that.” Mostly, his hand is just there, a weight against the back of your head, as you find your rhythm against him, guiding you in only the speed and pressure until he abandons his control at the base of his dick in favor of returning his grip on the counter-top, “Now your hands, for what you can’t reach.”

Giving his thighs one last squeeze, you hum your acknowledgement, watching his head lull sideways onto his shoulder as he watches you with parted lips. His breathing wasn’t so even as it once was, coming more labored with interspersed moans that he bites back behind his bottom lip. He looks… amazing like this, bathed in the crimson lowlight, shadows shading half his face, but his pleasure is on full display. It’s evident in the shiver that sparks up his spine, and the flush visible along his neck, where his beard has been neatly trimmed.

You feel his thighs quiver, and he drags you a little further down his shaft than you’d gone before, hitting deeper in your throat as he huffs, “Hollow your cheeks for me.” You do it, running your tongue along the underside of him as he fills your mouth, fighting against the urge to gag, and keeping your breathing as steady through your nose as you can. Your eyes water slightly, as his hips give a shallow thrust, curse choked off in his throat, _“Fuck—_ doll,” his fingers dig into your scalp ever so slightly, but it’s his praise that has you shifting uncomfortably on your knees, “you take me so good— look so fucking good with my dick down your throat—”

Bucky chokes on his words, as you hum your own moan against him, stroking him steadily with your mouth and hands, until he’s all but shaking from the restraint it takes to not fuck himself directly into your mouth. His brow is furrowed, concentration dwindling as he pushes you down on him until he does hit the back of your throat, and you do gag, throat spasming around him for the instant it takes to come back up for air.

_“Fuck, sorry,”_ he gasps, as you choke your distress on thin air, but you shake your head as best you can with his grip.

Slightly hoarse, your own arousal comes clearly in your voice, “no, I can take it.”

“You sure?”

“I can,” there’s a dare in your voice, a challenge, wanting to give more than just this, and knowing he’s close. You’ll let him do it.

“If it’s too much, you just tap out,” Bucky tells you, swiping his thumb along your bottom lip as you nod in understanding and prepare yourself for what’s to come. “Try to relax,” is the most counterintuitive thing he’s said thus far, but you lick your lips, and take him back into your mouth. Pumping him from base to tip with your hand and mouth, it quickens with each thrust, his hand in your hair, completely guiding your pace now.

Catching your claws at the curve of his ass, you feel him pushing your limits, gag reflex threatening to act up as he thrusts himself deeper into your mouth. You were getting sloppy, but you can’t help it, only able to focus on breathing and not gagging as he hits the back of your throat— but even that doesn’t help. You’re drooling, tears watering your eyes from the irritating burn until he’s fucking your face in earnest.

But, god, are the sounds he’s making worth the discomfort. He’s not even trying to hold back, now. Groaning in the back of his throat, moaning as you whimper along his dick, his fist is in your hair, and all you can do is hold on for dear life.

The way he says your name, on the end of a whine, mingled with a curse and some plea to god himself, is something you never thought could come so prettily from his throat. And you can feel it— his climax building in the twitch of his pulse against your tongue, the pulsating length of him as his hips stutter in their once-rhythmic pacing. He’s so close, and you just want to get him there, from the bottom of your heart.

Scraping your nails along his inner thigh seems to do it, as he gasps like he’s genuinely surprised before he’s all but yanking you from the length of him in an effort to keep you from completely choking on the spurt of it, salty on your tongue. He’s a mess of desperation as he empties himself into your mouth with shallow thrusts, dribbling down your chin in the midst of his overstimulation.

His grip loosens as you swallow it down, slightly dazed in the immediate aftermath as his hand slips from the back of your head to the nape of your neck, dragging along your jaw until his thumb catches the remnants of his cum at your lips, not sounding the least bit convincing when he apologizes, “Sorry for not warning you.”

“Don’t be,” you counter, catching his wrist in your hand to wrap your lips around his thumb, more of an impulse than an attempt at sensuality, though that seems to be the effect of it, with the delayed moan that catches on his tongue.

“You’re killin’ me here, doll,” Bucky grunts as you leave his thumb with a kiss before he helps you back to your feet. This close to him, it’s almost easy to forget why you were here in the first place. The thought of your debt once distant in the back of your mind, comes flooding back to you in waves. You’re just on the verge of daring to ask him again, when he glances towards his watch with a sigh, adjusting his jeans back and buckling himself back in, “Shit, have we really been in here for that long? Better head back out there and let Steve and Sam know we’re getting out of here before they come looking.”

“What time is it?” it’s a simpler question than the one you want to ask, as his hands cup your jaw to drag you into one last kiss.

When he parts, a smile dances along his lips, “Almost eight. You got anything important goin’ on tomorrow?”

“No… Why?”

“I want to see you again,” he rolls his eyes, releasing you to scoop his sunglasses from the counter and tuck them into his collar once more. Slipping his gloves back on, he continues, “Got a meeting I gotta’ go to. It would be less boring with a date.”

“A… date,” it sounds strange on your lips, but you persist, “to what kind of meeting?”

“The kind of meeting you don’t have to worry about,” Bucky shrugs, adjusting his coat, before reaching out to do the same to yours, “afterwards there’s gonna’ be food, though, which is all that really matters.” You don’t really know if you’re allowed to deny him. If this question is all for the show of it, an illusion of choice, but he doesn’t leave you to overthink it for long, “I’ll have you picked up after the business is done, so probably around eight.”

That’s that, you guess, as you follow him towards the door. Reemerging into the gallery is easier than you assumed it would be. The crowd hasn’t dwindled as Bucky guides you through it in his path towards the front, until he catches sight of Steve, Sam, and Peter talking around a sculpture on the far side of the room.

Given the task of finding your way to the front, you watch as he peels off in their direction. This was, perhaps, the easiest part of the night, as you escape into the night air beyond the glass doors of the gallery entrance. Breathing in cools you down, chilly oxygen expanding your lungs. It was getting colder with the descent into nightfall, and your coat wasn’t as thick as it should have been for the plummeting temperature, but you hadn’t expected to be out this late anyway.

The sounds of the city are no more muted at night than they are during the day, distant sirens and passerby conversation mingling into a concoction that feels like yours, like home. As much a normal night as once can be in Manhattan. It’s enough to clear your head, with the assistance of the crisp autumn air, as you sigh deeply in response to the thoughts sorting themselves in your head.

Of two things you were certain. The first conclusion you had arrived at, was the most obvious. You had to find out for certain how many more of these… transactions would absolve you of your debt. Nailing Barnes down to a concrete answer, however difficult getting it out of him might be, is your only chance of getting out of this unscathed.

The second, harder to accept conclusion, was one admitted with reluctance. You found yourself empathizing with him, which was a dangerous thought in itself. Worse, was the admittance that, despite who he was, and what he did, there was a sliver of goodness in him, and you had seen a glimpse of it. You supposed it made sense. Something in him had to inspire the loyalty of those who followed him.

But it only served to make you more conflicted.

Opening your eyes, you catch sight of Peter, beyond the glass doors, until he pushes them open with Barnes close on his heels.

“They sure had a good park reserved for us,” Peter’s grin is wide, as he gestures down the street a short ways, where you spot the Jag sitting roughly thirty feet away, “put cones up and everything.”

“Why don’t you go warm up the car for us, huh, kid?” his sigh fogs the air around you, as Bucky digs into his pocket, tugging out a packet of cigarettes and fishing one from within.

“Sure thing, boss,” Peter easily bounds a yard ahead of your leisurely walk towards the car.

Offhandedly, you comment, “You know, those things’ll kill you.”

The light isn’t catching, as he strikes his thumb against the lighter, pausing in his effort to grin around the cancer stick between his teeth, “Worried about my health, now, doll?”

“Just didn’t know I could get out of my debt so easily,” it’s something close to a tease, as you watch him try to light the cigarette again, only to be thwarted by a whip of the air around you. “Speaking of,” you draw carefully, glancing to see Peter has advanced his distance to nearly ten feet ahead of you, now, pulling the keys from his back pocket, “how many more payments do you think I’ve got?”

When you look back to Bucky, he lines up his cigarette again, hand hovering to shield the flame from the wind, but his eyes are trained on you. For a split second, you’re almost hopeful that he’s in a good enough mood to take your question seriously, this time.

Then, Bucky strikes the lighter, one last time.

You think it’s an awful bright flash, for such a little flame— but you blink again, and you’re not looking at the flame anymore, or the cigarette that was between Bucky’s lips. You’re looking at the sky, and it’s cloudier than you remember it being a moment ago— why are you looking at the sky, again?

_Why is it so quiet?_

You feel bafflingly heavy, as something white sifts down from the sky, white— like ash. Was something on fire?

Sitting up takes a minute, and you’re slower than the rush in the head that the action brings. You shut your eyes as a pain sets in, like gravel scraping against your legs, and a ringing in your ears that wasn’t there a moment ago.

No, a moment ago, there had only been silence.

Prying your eyes back open, you feel something warm, dripping down your cheek. Making to wipe it away, your hand comes back wet, sticky— inky, until the streetlight catches it, then it glints of crimson.

_Were you bleeding?_

Car alarms are what accompanies the ringing at first, as it dulls to give way to sirens, until the cotton in your ears has cleared enough for you to register that a man has crouched in front of you— was shouting at you.

_**Sam?** _

You know you said it. Your mouth moved and everything, but you don’t hear yourself in your ears like you normally do. Sam reaches out, taking you by the chin, tilting your head sideways to look at something on the side of your head.

_“— you hear me? Can you hear me?”_ he shouts your name, and that’s when the fog clears somewhat more, when your tunnel-vision expands and you see the flames towering into the sky. The heat slicing through the cold air as fire plumes from a car, back further than you remember yourself to be standing a moment ago.

“Sam, is a car on fire?” you know it’s on fire. You can see it, but it doesn’t feel real. Your voice is too calm, disconnected, until he tugs your chin back so you face him.

“Listen to me, don’t move! You’re gonna’ need stitches!” Sam was still shouting at you, sounding clearer, but there’s more added to his voice now, there’s screaming. There’s people gathering around, watching you, “ _Steve?_ Is Bucky okay?”

You don’t hear the answer.

And all of a sudden, you realize that the car— the one that’s on fire— is the Jaguar. Mangled and dented and charred, sure, but _that is the Jaguar on fire._

The terror that washes over you, is unlike anything you’ve felt, as you catch Sam by the arm, snapping his attention back to you when you point towards the car. This time, you do hear your own voice, screaming in your ears, when you realize there’s been an explosion.

_**“PETER!”** _


End file.
